


litany in which certain things are crossed out

by Ayes



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A pub that's a diner, A town that's a metaphor, Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Cottagecore, Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Crowley the secret artist, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Ineffable idiots go to a school dance, Inspired by Richard Siken, Lower Tadfield (Good Omens), M/M, POC Adam, POC Crowley if you squint, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), but come on it's the bois, but really it's a rom com, god they’re dumb, who probably shouldn't be drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:20:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25481527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayes/pseuds/Ayes
Summary: A beaten-down Aziraphale opens a bakery in the small town of Tadfield, where he finds an all-night greasy spoon and one fallen Crowley, who is making amends through various and increasingly ridiculous means of community service. Features an inexperienced!Aziraphale, Crowley the town ne’er-do-well, and Crowley’s self-appointed protector, young Adam. Human AU.All quotations are from Richard Siken’s earth-shattering collections of poetry, Crush and War of the Foxes.cw/tw: brief mentions of fatphobia; homophobia; religious oppression; miscarriage; self-hatred; background character death; drug addiction; foster care; past animal abuse… all referenced and not actively happening in the story,  but sad beginnings that are addressed in order to make room for happy endings.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 200
Kudos: 202





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First Good Omens fic! All quotations are from Richard Siken’s earth-shattering collections of poetry, Crush and War of the Foxes. My playlist for this fic is [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1tYhHq3dosiunPu4PLnodp?si=BPqXPf0oRJGJpYJ36eN6VQ), and please feel free to find me on [Tumblr](https://sayesayes.tumblr.com) or share this fic with [this photoset](https://sayesayes.tumblr.com/post/624503323371929600/litany-in-which-certain-things-are-crossed-out-a). I’d love to chat!

**for which no words exist**

**“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river  
but then he’s still left  
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away  
but then he’s still left with his hands.”  
_boot theory — richard siken_**

“Of course he’s setting up a bakery,” Aziraphale’s stepfather had said. He said it meanly, which was the way he said everything, and Aziraphale had never quite figured out whether the insult implied that he was too fat or too effeminate. 

Perhaps both.

The words had stuck with him, and in the pre-dawn dark that filled his brand-new shop, Aziraphale took a deep breath and reached for the inner reserves of positivity that had gotten him this far. Of _course_ I’m setting up a bakery, he told himself firmly. It was the right step, the perfect thing for him. It was why he had quit the bank, had quit London, had left his mother to her church and the hurtful silences that his stepfather so loved to fill with hurtful words. A bakery was just the thing – the perfect thing. A bakery was a place where Aziraphale didn’t think anybody could be unhappy. He’d had enough of unhappiness.

The shop was beautiful even in the dark, with marble counters and an antique register up front, a stand for listing daily specials beside a state-of-the-art espresso machine that he had no idea how to use. Aziraphale’s favorite place was the back kitchen, his new haven of proofing and kneading. Massive wooden countertops and gleaming racks, currently filled with trays and trays of pastries. He’d done croissant, scones, and muffins, of course — but he’d also started on some kouign amann and treats for after breakfast: éclair and macaron, custard tarts, morning buns, and even ambitious slices of mille-feuille. Right now the carefully-timed dance of oven and yeast had coalesced into one impressive army of sweets that almost certainly wouldn’t be consumed on the first day that Angel Food Bakery was open. Better to be safe than sorry, though, and besides it had helped his nerves. Since moving into the flat upstairs, he’d barely slept, too busy writing menus and perfecting recipes. Now he was left in the silence of four AM, hours to go before his next big chapter began, and no chance whatsoever of sleeping.

Aziraphale’s stomach rumbled, and he sighed, peering at his army of baked goods as though one would transform into a sandwich, but none of them miraculously became the type of proper meal he likely needed. The fridge upstairs was still empty, if one didn’t count white wine, and so he found his tartan scarf and went to brave the world outside his new oasis.

Lower Tadfield had been as far from London as Azirapahle was willing to go, and the drive there alone had been cathartic. Just his beat-up old Volkswagen, packed with boxes, memories disappearing in the rear-view window. 

The memories had caught up with him since then, keeping him company now on the walk through town. Aziraphale hadn’t done much exploring yet, but if he was lucky there would be a convenience store open with something to eat, hopefully even some horrid tea. Likely there was nothing open at this hour — he had to get used to living so far from the lights of London. He liked it though, the dark so deep and rich that the stars opened up above him, just barely illuminating the thatched rooftops and cobblestones, the green fields and the sleepily-whispering river. It was cool but not uncomfortable in his cozy old coat, and the air was perfumed with cut grass and the soft smell of inevitable rain. There were more stars than he’d seen back home — back in his old home, that was, constellations that he’d only seen in books before.

Mary had known them all. He let himself have the thought, dwelling for a moment as though it were a sore tooth he was pressing with his tongue. And then he let it go again, let her go again, and saw the light of an inn.

The inn slanted slightly, as though it were so old it had simply grown tired of standing upright. It was two stories, skinny but deep, built of the same ancient brick as the retaining walls behind it that kept it from slumping all the way into the river. Heavy, fogged-over glass windows framed squares of gold, the lights inside glowing in that magical way that only pubs ever did. It must have been five in morning, long past the time most pubs were open and hours away from respectable business openings. But half-hazy figures moved across the windows, and then the door opened to laughter as one patron waved their departure. Aziraphale drew closer, charmed by the riot of flowerpots and hanging plants that made every step a hazard in the dark, ducking under a wooden sign that declared it The Four Horsemen.

The scent of the night had taken a decided turn toward the yeasty, like good beer and bad bread, and Aziraphale’s mouth was watering when he pushed open the door. 

Inside, the pub was cleaner than he’d expected, and cozier too: a brick fireplace sat in one corner, with a series of sticky tables underneath the windows that glowed from outside. From inside, most of the light was more dull yellow than gold, but the decor was just to Aziraphale’s taste: the furnishings could be considered antique, but had likely been purchased new and unmoved since, the type of heavy wood that scraped along floors rutted with equally ancient grooves. A handful of workmen gathered at one of the tables, and alongside the heavy oak bar, a man slept with his head in his arms across from the bartender, who was polishing a glass with all the speed of a geriatric turtle.

“Tracy!” the bartender shouted, upon seeing him, and Aziraphale colored, wondering if that were some local term he ought to have known to look out for. But a blowsy woman came bustling out from a door behind him, swinging it shut behind her in a roast-scented cloud.

“Now, Shadwell, no need to shout. You’ll wake our young man up, you know.” She gestured at the sleeping man, which comforted Aziraphale somewhat, as the red-haired slump of him read more _dead_ than _resting_. 

“Fat chance,” Shadwell said dubiously, and Tracy rolled her eyes at him before hastening over to Aziraphale. She took him by the wrist, leading him to a leather stool before thrusting a laminated menu at him from somewhere in her apron .

“Here you are, love, we’ve a lamb special on, and breakfast if you’re in the mood. Not serving alcohol again for a few hours, but if you’ve a flask I’ll look the other way.”

“Ah, that’s very—” _illegal?_ “kind of you.” He pulled his coat off and smoothed his hands over his jumper, sliding the coat across his legs so he didn’t have to drape it awkwardly across the back of the stool. It was cozy at the bar, like he was tucked into the pub itself, tucked into the ramshackle building, tucked into the only bright corner of the sleeping little town.

“You seem like a breakfast bloke,” Tracy nodded at him, businesslike, and bustled away without waiting for his order. Aziraphale supposed he _was_ a breakfast bloke, although he wasn’t sure what that meant. Goodness, he really had to really stop waiting to be insulted by strangers. _Although once one began anticipating such slights from family, it was perhaps no wonder that one might expect such things from strangers_ , he told himself, sighing a little inwardly as he covered his coat with a napkin.

Shadwell started a one-sided conversation with him about the weather and what that might mean for the growing season, and Aziraphale was served a full English in the time it took to let his tea cool down. Once it was in front of him he realized how hungry he was, and he tucked in gratefully once the first bite reminded him how good it was to be warmed from the inside, full and much better equipped for the day ahead.

“A bakery, eh?” Tracy said once she joined Shadwell in their chat. She looked speculative. “We could use fresh bread around here, we have to get it trucked in because I can’t be bothered getting up that early. Would you be interested? Only you can’t beat fresh.”

Aziraphale agreed whole-heartedly, and they debated the merits of plain rolls versus chive-and-cheese. Aziraphale was suggesting compound butters and making notes on his napkin before he knew it.

All in all, he felt much better when he finally got up to head back to the bakery. The sun had risen somewhere between his beans and sausages, and now he could flip the bakery sign over to discover what the day would bring. He already had his first customers, and the shop hadn’t even opened yet. Tracy gave him a hug before he went, and Shadwell nodded, and suddenly Aziraphale thought he could do this after all.

The man slept away one bar stool over, and Aziraphale glanced over once more before heading home. Long red hair spilled across a wiry back and covered the face, sunglasses smashed against one thin arm that was being used as a pillow. It couldn’t be very comfortable. He had the strangest urge suddenly, a compulsion to slide the glasses off and make the man more comfortable, but in the end, he turned to go.

****

******“Let me do it right for once,  
for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,  
you know the story, simply heaven.”  
_litany in which certain things are crossed out — richard siken_ **

****

****

****

The first morning of the rest of Aziraphale’s life had gone _exceedingly_ well, he thought, considering how prepared he had been for abject failure. After all, having failed in every other aspect of his life, he would have considered another failure almost comforting in its familiarity. But no, he had sold out of everything by two o’clock and shaken rather more hands than he'd expected. Tadfield was a friendly town and newcomers were rare enough to investigate— and once his new neighbors arrived to scope him out, they could do a lot worse than try one of his macarons.

He closed up early, vowing to bake even more the next day, preparing a truly ungodly amount of dough and compote to ensure that he made good on that resolution. He even got a start on the rolls that Tracy had mentioned, binning the first batch when it wasn’t exactly perfect. And if by binning he meant _set aside for personal consumption_ , what of it? 

Exhausted, Aziraphale stumbled up into the as-yet-undecorated flat above and passed out, the sun still high in the sky beyond his curtains. It was a satisfying, well-earned sleep, as delicious as any macaron, but as a result he found himself waking up sometime past ten, starving and utterly off-schedule once again.

Ah, well. This time, he knew where to go.

The path to the Four Horsemen was more familiar than the day before, although Aziraphale wondered if he’d ever manage to see the place in the daylight. At least it was earlier than yesterday: perhaps he’d manage to be back in bed before morning. 

“Tracy!” Shadwell shouted, as soon as he came in. “Bread!” Aziraphale smiled despite himself, raising a hand in greeting. He dropped into the same seat he’d taken the night before, sliding the basket he’d brought onto the counter for Tracy’s inspection. She came out in a rush again, wiping her hands on some battered dishrag.

She cooed over his offerings and disappeared into the kitchen with his basket, promising to return with a meal for him — apparently she was still still in charge of what he was eating.

“Bread, is it?” A voice beside Aziraphale made him look up, startled. “That’s a strange name.”

“Oh, ah—” The man who had been asleep in the stool the night before was awake tonight, still tilted forward in an insouciant way that was nearly as lazy as his unconsciousness had been. He _oozed_ over the counter, head propped up sideways by one long-fingered bronze hand. He was wild-haired and whip-thin, sunglasses hinting at chaotic eyes atop an elegant nose. And he was so painfully handsome that Aziraphale wanted to swallow his tongue. “Er, my real name isn’t much better, I’m afraid. Aziraphale,” he managed, at least. “I run Angel Food Bakery, it’s uh, new.”

“Ah, the bakery angel.” At Aziraphale’s stunned expression, the man went on, gesturing broadly. “Small town. You’re news.”

“Oh dear.” Aziraphale frowned, making the man smirk. “I didn’t intend to be _news_.”

“Crowley,” the man said, shifting his weight to offer a hand. “I’m the old news. Glad the gossip mill’s turning a page, more pity you.” He had a curious way of drawing words out, over-enunciating at random. Aziraphale took his hand carefully. He expected it to be too hot to hold, but it was cool, long fingers strong.

“A pleasure to meet you,” he said politely. “Do come by the shop sometime.”

“Sure thing, angel.” It didn’t sound like the man was making fun, but Aziraphale’s shoulders went up all the same. He’d never been good with handsome men — never been as good with men as he’d like to be at all. He was afraid Crowley would ask what brought him there, or if he’d brought a family with him, but instead he just reached for his coffee and asked, “how was the opening?”

“Oh, it was lovely!” Aziraphale glowed a bit, recounting the day, and they chatted easily for a moment, interrupted only by Tracy’s delivery of a large platter covered in some kind of roast. “I couldn’t possibly eat all of this,” Aziraphale murmured in surprise, and Shadwell snorted from where he was refilling Crowley’s coffee. Crowley gave him an icy look, which shouldn’t have been visible behind the sunglasses, and Aziraphale felt a rush of gratitude toward him. Not that he blamed Shadwell — he knew what he looked like, and all that implied. But Crowley reached over with his fork and took a bite off his plate, glaring at Shadwell all the while.

“Of course you can’t, I’ll help you,” he said. Tracy, from across the room, beamed. She’d put one of the fresh rolls on the plate, and Crowley went right for it. “ _Fuck me_ , that’s good.”

“Er.” Aziraphale could feel himself blushing, but he forced himself to smile. “Thank you, I can certainly make you some.”

“You tempter,” Crowley teased, and Aziraphale’s blush was never going to leave him. Crowley was friendly, that was all — he seemed the type of man who would flirt with anything that held still long enough, confirmed when Tracy came up behind to squeeze his narrow shoulders.

“You’ll be up all night, love,” she clucked, seeing that his coffee was fresh and hot. “Shadwell, you ought to switch him to decaf.”

“What’s he got to do tomorrow?” Shadwell grumbled. “They’re London runaways, woman, they’re probably used to keeping all hours.”

Crowley smiled broadly, but Aziraphale noticed that some of his rakish energy had ebbed away at that. He put his coffee down, shoved his sunglasses back up his aquiline nose.

“I’m not running away,” Aziraphale said for the record, even if he was, a bit. But certainly there was another word than _runaway_ , once one was approaching the close of their thirties. He was running _toward_ , he had thought, even if he didn’t know quite what that meant yet.

“Sure you are,” Shadwell said. He had a matter-of-fact pessimism to him that was somehow charming — Aziraphale didn’t hold it against him, but it was clear how he balanced the effervescent energy of his partner. Tracy had returned from giving a table their bill, and she bumped up against Shadwell, her expression lovingly exasperated. “City folk like you two only leave the Big Smoke when London can’t hold all your sins anymore.”

“Now, Shadwell,” Tracy scolded, smacking him with the dishrag she carried. “You leave them alone.”

“Yes, Shadwell, fuck off with your truths,” Crowley agreed, pleasantly enough. “And keep the caffeine coming.”

“Hmph.” Shadwell wandered off, and Tracy rolled her eyes at them in solidarity before following. It was quiet in the pub now, Aziraphale alone with the stranger. Crowley.

Crowley sighed, pushed a hand through his hair, then recovered, aiming a brilliant smile sideways at Aziraphale. “Same old Shadwell. It’s alright, he only says what everyone is always thinking. In a way it’s better, that way, more truthful. Anyway, you don’t look like you have much in the way of terrible secrets.” 

Aziraphale knew how he must look. He was too old to be a runaway, but too young for his old-man aura, the comfortable way he dressed not contributing any cool factor. He knew he ran to paunchy, and was colored English pale, nearly washed out with his blond hair and pale blue eyes. His predilection for plaid meant he wore clashing patterns more often than not, and he wore more rough-knit aran jumpers than anyone he’d ever met under sixty.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t have terrible secrets. “Appearances can be deceiving,” he admitted, and Crowley laughed – actually laughed, at his joke, pleased and a little knowing. Aziraphale hadn’t known someone could laugh at a weak joke so attractively. But Crowley’s head fell back, his hair pooling at the back of his shirt and tangling in a Swirl of red and black at the collar. Anything he did was likely attractive, if Aziraphale was honest with himself, which he was working on being these days.

“So you aren’t the overeducated Oxford type you appear? You didn’t move out here for the simpler life once your desk job got to be too crushing? Let me guess, kids got old enough to justify a divorce—”

“No kids.” Aziraphale cleared his throat against that particular pain. “But I was a banker until recently, and while I don’t agree that one can be _overeducated_ —”

“Appearances,” Crowley repeated ominously, pointing at him with a fork before he reached over to take another bite of Aziraphale’s food. “It’s alright, I’m sure you come out looking better than me.”

Aziraphale bit his tongue around _I don’t think that’s possible_. He just pushed the plate between them, unaccountably charmed to be sharing a meal. “So what do you do? I notice you’re out here as late as I am.” If appearances _were_ anything to go by, Crowley would be head of an intellectual punk band or manager of some anarchist co-op bookstore. His black button-down looked expensive, as did his sunglasses, but he was rumpled enough that it may well have been the same shirt he had worn the day before, and he carried it all off with a carelessness that was tantalizing.

Crowley chucked and speared a potato. “Ah, all sorts of things. I do medical writing, mostly, but that’s freelance. I’m all around town, to be honest. Work with kids, do some shifts at the animal shelter.”

“That’s lovely,” Aziraphale said, touched. Shadwell came back out from the kitchen, bearing fresh menus for a couple that had come in while Aziraphale was distracted by Crowley. 

“It’s community service, did he tell you that?” Shadwell threw over his shoulder as he passed. Aziraphale frowned at his rudeness, but Crowley’s expression had gone stiff.

“He _probably_ thought it was inappropriate to blurt out in public,” Aziraphale replied pointedly, in his iciest tone.

Crowley gave him a grateful smile — sideways, like only half of his mouth knew how.

They finished the roast in silence, forks moving together across one plate.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand blessings upon @thundercrackfic for her incredible beta notes!

**“Oh we’re a mess, poor humans, poor flesh—hybrids of angels and animals, dolls with diamonds stuffed inside them. We’ve been to the moon and we’re still fighting over Jerusalem.”  
_black telephone — Richard siken_**

By the time a week had passed, Aziraphale was able to predict the numbers of customers he’d have each day. While he still rose early to bake for them, he’d managed to find the grocery store and eat dinner at more regular times. He’d unpacked his possessions, such as they were, and sorted his books into the built-in bookshelves of his flat. The flat was still empty, its walls lacking art, and its bed perpetually unmade, but it was his. And that was enough.

He had brought a photo of his parents, and one of Mary, laughing on his arm in the church with flowers and family all around them. He left the photos in the suitcase, put the suitcase in the closet. At night he could almost forget they were there, and in the mornings life was more joyful than it had been for years.

He would wake before the sun, drink some tea in his kitchenette, peer out over the river as it rushed by his window. He’d page through one of his books, reading his old marginal notes as he went, trying to match his present reactions to his past self’s thoughts. Sometimes it seemed that Aziraphale had been a different man, and sometimes he underlined the commentary, agreeing again.

Then it was time to start baking. He would put on one of his waistcoats — though he didn’t need a bow tie, these days — and top it with a sweater if the day seemed brisk. Inevitably the sweater would come off again, though, as he spent the next several hours sweating in front of ovens, throwing around pounds of flour and kneading what felt like acres of dough. He’d have another cup of tea by his elbow, but it would go cold as he hustled around, setting out displays and filling racks with back-up, piling day-old pastries into a basket to use as free samples or sell at a discount.

Already his shop-neighbor Anathema had made a habit of coming by for his day-old bagels, and they’d swap stories before she had to go back to her bookshop next door. Aziraphale wished he had a bookshop, sometimes, but admitted to himself that he wouldn’t be able to part with a single page. Anathema sometimes brought him books, but he was equally likely to pop over on his lunch break to browse for himself. She seemed to know everything everyone was doing in town, and he was tempted to ask about Crowley, but he managed to bite his tongue.

Aziraphale knew very well what would come of seeing Crowley every night, of meeting up for jokes and sharing meals with a handsome stranger. He’d fall right into another ill-advised and unrequited infatuation. It was better to avoid him entirely. At least, that had been his subconscious decision. Now, with Crowley in front of him and looking more delicious than anything in the pastry case, Aziraphale forgot his plans for self-preservation.

Nothing new. He’d always been fairly weak, after all. 

He liked the people who came into the shop, at least: the families allowing their child one cupcake, the harried husbands who had forgotten a birthday, the regulars who silently accepted the same coffee and pastry each day. He liked being a part of their day, their dinners, their special treats. He would look up already smiling when the bell on the door rang, unleashing his perfume of sugar onto the streets outside.

He was looking up with a smile when a boy banged through the door as though finishing a footrace. The child was scrawny, perhaps ten or eleven, but possessed a savage buoyancy that filled the front room. “Hello!” The boy caroled with a bright smile, and Aziraphale felt his own welcoming smile turn up to a conspiratorial grin.

“Well, hello, young sir. Welcome to Angel Food Bakery. Does anything catch your eye?”

“Oh! Hmm.” The boy ranged over the glass-covered display. “Can I have a cookie?” He pointed through the glass at a fat, chewy one, studded through with caramel and toasted corn flakes. Aziraphale ignored the cash register and handed it over.

“I’m Adam,” Adam said, between bites of cookie.

“Aziraphale.”

“I know.”

Aziraphale was about to ask him how he knew, when the door swung open again. “Terribly sorry, angel, he’s faster than me,” Crowley said, out of breath as he stepped into the bakery. 

Crowley. In his shop. And in the daylight, at that. Unmoored from the comforting setting of the Four Horsemen. Aziraphale felt quite faint. 

“Er, that’s quite alright,” he managed. “Quite alright, you’re welcome anytime, of course.” He had said to drop by. He hadn’t known there would be an _Adam_ involved, but that was okay, wasn’t it? Of course it was. “Haven’t seen you lately.”

“You haven’t been by the pub,” Crowley pointed out, as though they had a standing nightly appointment and not just one official encounter. “Sleeping at conventional hours, is that it? Tracy’s missed feeding you.”

Aziraphale paled, wondering how much food he’d be served the next time. “Well… I’m sorry, I suppose.” He certainly didn’t want to alienate his — friend? A friend he’d like to have, even if Aziraphale had been avoiding him, if he were honest. Crowley just seemed like more than he’d been prepared to handle, in moving here. The idea of a Crowley. 

Adam wandered down the long line of display cases, peering at the treasures inside them. Crowley approached the counter, leaning against it. He was still wearing his sunglasses, but this close, Aziraphale could see the faded freckles that peeked out from behind them. “Actually, I’m sorry,” Crowley offered, his voice quiet and serious. “Ate your food, didn’t tell you about my community service—”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said urgently, just as quietly, looking over to Adam to see if he was listening. He was.

“He knows,” Crowley said airily. “He’s part of it.”

“I’m his punishment,” Adam put in, smirking as he looked up. “Do you have any mithai? Gulaab jamun, maybe?”

“Not yet, my dear boy,” Aziraphale told him, abashed. “I can make you some this weekend.”

“Oh, he’s spoiled enough,” Crowley said, too cheerfully for it to be true. “Anyhow, I owe you for his cookie.”

“Absolutely not.” Aziraphale turned around to give himself a breath of distance, and began to make Crowley a cup of coffee. “I won’t accept any money and your apology is unnecessary. All is well.”

“Hmm.” Crowley cleared his throat, apparently surprised by Aziraphale’s quick acceptance. “Well then. Guess I didn’t need to bring a cute kid to improve your impression of me”

“Hey!” Adam cried, around his last mouthful of cookie. 

“Hey yourself,” Crowley warned, his voice warm. Adam subsided, still chewing. Aziraphale couldn’t suppress his small smile.

“It’s a pleasure to make Adam’s acquaintance,” Aziraphale assured Adam through Crowley. “And when you say he’s part of it, you mean…?”

“He’s supposed to be mentoring me but he just keeps showing me how to cheat at chess,” Adam grinned.

“How to _win_ at chess,” Crowley corrected. “And he’s not a punishment, just a bit of a brat.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale admonished, but both of them laughed, Adam’s cackle a miniaturized version of Crowley’s tooth-baring chuckle. “Well, very well then. I thought he might be yours.”

“That would require touching a woman,” Crowley chuckled, and Adam laughed too, but Aziraphale felt his face freeze as he hit a mental wall. He had no idea how to respond. Sexuality had been something buried inside of him, only bursting free to cause trouble. But Crowley said it so _casually_ , like everyone was in on the joke. Except Aziraphale hadn’t been in on it. Ought he to have been? Did Crowley mean anything in telling him? No, of course not. Aziraphale had just never gotten used to—to being casual. About it. 

“Ah,” Crowley said, peering at his face. It was impossible to read his expression, with the glasses, but his voice was not unkind as he realized he’d tongue-tied Aziraphale. “I put my foot in it. Sorry, force of habit. See you at the Horsemen, then.”

Crowley insisted on paying for the coffee, and before Aziraphale could recover, he and Adam were leaving. Aziraphale was just wondering whether he’d made _Crowley_ uncomfortable with his reaction when Adam popped back in, out of breath.

“Crowley really likes you,” he got out, head stuck sideways through the front door. “Gulaab jamun, don’t forget!”

**“Hello darling, sorry about that.  
Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we  
lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell  
and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.  
Especially that, but I should have known.  
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together  
to make a creature that will do what I say  
or love me back.”  
_litany in which certain things are crossed out — richard siken_**

Aziraphale didn’t make it back to the Four Horsemen for the next week, but that didn’t mean he didn’t see Crowley again. In fact, Crowley seemed to be everywhere Aziraphale looked.

He went to the hardware store for a smoke detector and saw a grinning Crowley directing children into school, wearing a neon vest like it was a three-piece suit. He went to the farmer’s market to pick up fresh herbs and Crowley was behind a stand for the community garden, cradling peaches in his hands like they were delicate china. Aziraphale would just be driving to an errand down the street, minding his own business, and then— Crowley, dirt on his hands, squinting behind his shades as he planted trees on the side of the road.

“What did he _do_?” he gave in and asked Anathema, but she frowned and shrugged, clearly unwilling to tell him. He sighed and gave her another bagel, and then two days later saw Crowley leaving her shop with a bucket of paint.

“Crowley’s off to the Meals on Wheels,” Tracy told him, when he came to the Four Horsemen and found Crowley’s chair empty.

“Got any cans for the food bank?” Adam asked, popping in to sample Aziraphale’s new mithai. “I’m helping Crowley!”

Wondering about Crowley became Aziraphale’s newest hobby. He went to the post office and wondered where Crowley had lived in London as he rifled through his bills. He ran a bath and wondered what Crowley’s first — or last? — name was. He made himself dinner and wondered whether Crowley would want to share it with him again.

He hated himself a bit for it, the way Crowley had overwhelmed his thinking, filling every quiet moment. One conversation and the hint of a mystery was all it took, apparently, and he was off to the obsessive races. He had prayed so hard to feel this way about Mary. He had looked at her beloved face again and again over the years and never been so drawn to it as he was to unseen eyes behind mirrored glass, twitching hands with a dusting of red-tinted hair.

So concerned was he with Crowley that, when Crowley actually appeared, it felt as though Aziraphale had willed him into existence: was all but imagining him now. The sun was starting to set, releasing fat swathes of gold in patches and blades, and he’d just finished wiping everything down and storing the day-olds. He’d gotten started on a batch of biscotti that would keep well for the next day, one eye on the oven as he began to close up. Once they were on cooling racks, he’d go upstairs, decide if there were enough leftovers to make something or perhaps try to go out to eat, even if he had to bring a book to keep as company.

Then, through the window, a darker kind of light. A flash of red, a figure in black. And there was Crowley, hands cupped around his face as he peered in through the window.

Aziraphale could have sworn he froze in place, but his body went on without him, smiling and gesturing so that the door was jangling open and his undoing was stepping inside.

“You can flip the sign, my dear,” he said, resigned to his fate as Crowley grinned his way into the shop.

“Consider it flipped,” Crowley answered, turning to face CLOSED to the street. The twist of his body made Aziraphale press his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “Thought I’d drop by to see if you were hungry.”

“Oh, I am,” Aziraphale told him, startled but pleased. “I’d love to get some food, I just have to finish up here.”

“Anything I can help with?” Crowley came close enough to lean on the counter across from him, and Aziraphale’s heart stuttered. He turned to make Crowley a coffee to save face, clearing his throat as he bent over the French press.

“Ah, not quite— Well, you could just keep an eye on this while I see whether the biscotti are ready.”

Distracted by slim shoulders shifting in his space and an over-awareness of the sleepy jazz that Aziraphale played like a security blanket in the evenings, he didn’t pay enough mind to what he was doing. The industrial oven took over most of the back wall and had been the most expensive thing in the shop, reaching truly hellish temperatures, and yet Aziraphale reached right in without a thought.

He yelped and the cookie sheet fell to the ground in a clatter, the loud clang echoing through the peaceful shop. Crowley was there in a moment, bringing the whiff of coffee in a self-made wind. 

“Ah, _fuck_ , the _oven mitt_ , I must apologize—” Aziraphale babbled. His hand was smarting too much to take in the look on Crowley’s face at his language. “And _damn_ , those had the last of my pistachio-rose blend, _shit_!”

“Shh, shh, shh.” Crowley’s burnished hands were on his wrist, tugging him over to the sink as Aziraphale seethed with embarrassment. “Deep breath.”

Crowley directed a stream of cool water onto Aziraphale’s hands and turned them over in his, making sure the water soothed every stripe of pink. Aziraphale took a breath and forgot to let it out. It burst out in a hiss only when Crowley turned away, grabbing a clean dish towel to soak in cold water and wring out and wrap around Aziraphale’s hands. He moved with a quick efficiency that was totally at odds with how flustered Aziraphale was. Crowley’s hands were strong and sure, and he pressed the cloth around Aziraphale’s palms like he was performing a blessing.

“Do you have any rings on? To remove ahead of any swelling,” he asked, and Aziraphale shook his head. His ring was in the closet with her portrait, packed away like so many memories. “Okay. Do you have any lotion? Aloe vera, even a moisturizer? Skin like that, you must have a moisturizer.”

Aziraphale laughed weakly. How did he deserve teasing? Fingers clasped around his wrists? He was an embarrassment, a failure. He was as bad a baker as everything else, falling to pieces because of Crowley’s proximity. Too many sermons had turned this churning in his chest into the feeling of _temptation_ , of some demonic wrong. Even if he didn’t believe that anymore, some part of it remained, as hard to clear as the smell of sulfur.

“I do apologize, you know,” he managed to tell Crowley. “Quite clumsy of me.”

“You’ve nothing to apologize for,” Crowley told him, suddenly serious. His grip on Aziraphale tightened infinitesimally before he seemed to notice, dropping his hands to his sides. “I actually had wanted to apologize, came by to do it, and then you start with the coffee and the biscuits like an honest-to-God angel—”

“Oh, not me,” Aziraphale was saying, right as Crowley said “ _I’m_ sorry.”

“You’ve nothing to apologize for,” Aziraphale parrots back to him. His hands hurt, and he missed Crowley’s touch.

“I hope I’m not annoying you,” Crowley murmured. It was quiet again, now that the ringing of the tray had left the air, replaced again with soft, ephemeral music and Crowley’s spicy-smoky smell.

“Why on earth would you think that?” Other than avoiding him for a week. Other than utterly freezing at _how straight do you think I am_.

Crowley gave him a wry smile that made Aziraphale’s chest ache, because he recognized self-hatred when he saw it. “Most of the town would like to be rid of me, I think. I don’t love them all either, mind.”

“But you do so much for this town,” Aziraphale found himself protesting, neon vest lighting up his mind’s eye. Crowley shook his head.

“Not out of the goodness of my heart, you know that. Shadwell and Adam won’t let me trick anyone into thinking I’m being altruistic.”

“Adam’s a good kid,” Aziraphale said carefully, steering for something lighter. “He seems to like you.”

Crowley shrugged, but Aziraphale could see that he was pleased. “He is a good kid. His foster family are lovely people, but they’re overwhelmed with placements most of the time. So we hang out plenty— I’ve got more time for him, is all.”

“It’s awful, being a powerless kid like that.” The coffee was ready. Neither of them moved to filter it, and it got darker and darker in the pot as it over-brewed. He thought about when his dad died, a holy man whose love for God had left behind only a sour taste in Aziraphale’s mouth and a tainted space at his mother’s side. He’d been a powerless kid, in his own way, well into adulthood. He still felt behind. But at that moment, with Crowley, he felt secure and cloistered and short on breath. 

Crowley may have released him, but the act of first aid had brought them closer together, and he was just a bit closer than casual. The space between them felt physical. Heavy.

“You’ll need some kind of painkillers,” Crowley said quietly. “Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, even naproxen sodium would do. Do you have anything?”

“What are you, a doctor?” Aziraphale asked warmly, and Crowley’s face shuttered. Aziraphale thought of cool water and _I do medical writing, mostly_ , and cleared his throat fast. “Er, I do have something, I think. Do pour that coffee before it becomes undrinkable, I’ll just— excuse me.”

He went upstairs as quickly as he dared and swallowed two pills in the mirror, glaring daggers at the idiot reflected back to him.

When he went downstairs, Crowley was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**“You’re in the eighth grade. You know these things.  
You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do  
long division,  
and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless  
he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you  
didn’t do,  
because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.”  
_a primer for the small weird loves — richard siken_**

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” Anathema said. She was wearing an odd combination of plaid and lace, her dark hair pulled into a severe bun.

Adam rolled his eyes, an affectation he’d clearly learned from Crowley, though he hadn’t fully grown into the hauteur. From Aziraphale’s position on the overstuffed chair in the bookshop, they both seemed to loom over him, even though Anathema was just lazing behind the counter as Adam restocked books. An open basket of mochi muffins sat half-destroyed on the counter, Anathema’s price for admitting Aziraphale to therapy.

“If you had, I might not have put my foot quite so deeply into my mouth. He _was_ a doctor, I presume?”

Anathema winced. “It’s _really_ not my story to tell.”

Aziraphale hated to think that they’d hit a wall so quickly. It was too soon for Crowley to confide in him, surely, and he didn't want to make the man uncomfortable. So they’d had an easy almost-friendship for a meal or so: so Aziraphale saw Crowley constantly, even when he shut his eyes at night. That didn't mean that Crowley owed him a thing.

His hands were pink and delicate still, though Crowley’s quick care had kept him from the pain and blisters that might have come. If anything, Aziraphale owed _him_. If anything, Aziraphale was much more comfortable with searching for blame.

“He’s been sulking all morning,” Adam said, making Aziraphale’s self-flagellation increase. “I tried to go round and he barely let me in.”

“He probably only let you in eventually so he could have someone to sulk at,” Anathema hazarded.

Aziraphale sighed. He knew he’d gone to Crowley’s friends for help, and that anything he said was bound to get back to him somehow. But he didn’t know anyone else in town yet, and he could use whatever insight he could get. He liked them, anyway. He thought it spoke in Crowley’s favor, that they loved him.

“I went by hours ago,” Adam added. “He’s likely gone by now.”

“I just wish I knew where,” Aziraphale sighed. He picked up one of the muffins and turned it over, studying it. “This wasn’t _too_ chewy, was it, my dear?”

Anathema and Adam were looking at him with the fondness he had just been heaping upon them. “I bet I know where he went,” Adam allowed, and took another muffin of his own. “You should go talk to him.”

“I couldn’t,” Aziraphale protested, horrified at the thought of imposing.

“You’d better.” Anathema said threateningly. “He’s probably working himself into a fit, and if you don't snap him out of it, he’ll be a nightmare.”

“One time I asked to listen to a band other than Queen in the car and he got so upset he pulled over,“ Adam confirmed.

“Once I implied that I didn't like his haircut and he stayed home until it grew out,” Anathema added. “Go. Now.”

**“Every morning the same big  
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out  
You will be alone always and then you will die.”  
_litany in which certain things are crossed out — richard siken_**

The animal shelter was on the far side of Tadfield, backing up to a series of fields and ponds that looked lovely for walking. He’d always found animal shelters in London to be gray and depressing, making him hunch his shoulders and resolve to _someday_ bring a fluffy cat home each time he passed by. This one felt peaceful, like the refuge it was meant to be. Even the usual chorus of barking felt happy rather than alarming. He could see instantly why this could be a place of solace for humans as well as animals.

The office was a standalone building, built of the same large grey stones and thatch as most of the village. Across a small courtyard was a larger outbuilding bordering a paddock. The office was closed up and quiet; all the doggy sounds came from the outbuilding.

Aziraphale collected the cups he’d brought—one coffee, one tea—and cleared his throat. He was nervous about showing up here, sure it was impolite or too forward (perhaps even _pestering_ ), but Anathema and Adam had insisted he’d be welcome. If he were honest with himself (which he was _trying to be now_ )... he wanted to see Crowley.

He walked across the courtyard, rounding the corner of the outbuilding to the paddock gate. Crowley sat on a low wooden bench against the side of the building in the company of a dozen dogs. Several were running and playing, while a few were curled up on the grass around his feet. An enormous pit bull sat in his lap, spilling over his wiry arms in potbellied contentement. Beyond him, just fields and fog and the silver stripe of the only road out of town. Crowley’s sunglasses were on the top of his head, pushing his hair back like a headband, but from this far away Aziraphale still couldn’t see his eyes.

Aziraphale’s feet crunching on gravel caught Crowley’s attention. He stopped murmuring to the dog, but didn’t look up. Aziraphale felt awkward and exposed, as though he took up a demanding amount of space by existing, by showing up uninvited. But Crowley just rested his head against the dog’s shoulder and waited for Aziraphale to approach. 

“May I sit?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley nodded, then gently encouraged the dog to leave his lap. It huffed and leaned against his legs, and Crowley reached down to pet its ears, keeping his mysterious eyes downcast. Aziraphale settled on the bench, holding the two cups steady on his lap.

Aziraphale had come to apologize, but for a moment all his rehearsed statements flew right out of his head. He was transfixed by the bucolic peace of the place, with the happy noises of playing dogs rising into the crisp air, the autumn sunlight turning fallen leaves golden. “I brought you some coffee,” he said finally, offering it to Crowley.

Crowley took it, and their hands touched, and their eyes met. The combination made Aziraphale’s teeth hurt, the double-shock frisson of gentle touch and exposed eyes. They were tawny brown, and they pierced his soul. No wonder Crowley hid them: every feeling the man had ever had was there, underlined by dark circles that spoke of years without good dreams. 

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Aziraphale began. “I wanted to—I feel that I offended you yesterday, and I owe you thanks, besides. You were so quick—you saved me a lot of pain.” He set his tea down on the bench beside him and held his hands out, palms toward Crowley, for inspection. To his own eyes, his hands were soft and clumsy, unappealing and still showing the marks of his stupidity. But they weren’t blistered, and he had Crowley to thank for that.

Crowley’s eyes were sharp as he inspected them, and then they softened. “Shouldn’t have run off.”

“It’s no bother, truly.”

“I think I owe you an explanation. Could do it over dinner. I owe you. For the roast.”

Aziraphale aimed a tight-lipped smile at his lap. _Dinner_ sounded like a date, but it couldn’t be. Even knowing Crowley was queer, no one wanted to date Aziraphale. His dates were few and far between, and he hadn’t had a second date since Mary.

He wanted—well, it wouldn’t do to think about what he _wanted_. Realistically, he would like a friend.

The pit bull was snuffling at the side of his knee, leaving nose prints on his trousers. “Who’s this old girl?” he asked, stalling.

“That’s Lucy.” Crowley scratched her blocky head. “She’s a young lass, really. She’s just seen too much.” Crowley’s eyes softened as Lucy glanced back up at him, bridging the gap between the two men with the press of her warm body.

Aziraphale hummed, side-eying Crowley. 

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes. It’s telling that I relate to her. Whatever you’re thinking, I’m sure you’re right.” He sighed, and Airaphale pursed his lips to hide a smile. “Dinner all right, then? We can go directly. Just gotta tuck in the wee ones.”

Aziraphale realized that it was impossible for him to say no to the invitation. Maybe if Crowley was willing to explain what was obviously a painful story, Aziraphale could cheer him by revealing his own, doubtless much more shameful one. They’d at least part ways on an even footing, leaving all their cards on the table behind them.

“Yes, all right. Let me help you.” Crowley shot him a smile, standing up. He reached for his sunglasses, hesitated, then dropped his hand. Aziraphale pretended not to notice. They rounded dogs up, giving out cuddles and scratches as they went. Crowley showed him where each one slept, in wide and cozy kennels lined with warm blankets and well stocked with toys.

“It’s frightfully difficult to say goodbye to them,” Aziraphale said, making an exaggerated pout at a puppy who was whining at the closed door.

“Don’t let them guilt you, I’ll be back to spoil them tomorrow.” Crowley gave Lucy a kiss and received a few tail thumps in return. “I do take a couple home sometimes, but there’s an adoption event in the morning.”

“If you have to be up early, my dear, we really don’t have to go out. Ah, go anywhere, I mean.”

“Well, there’s always takeaway,” Crowley laughed, then looked up. “There’s a Kashmiri place between here and the bakery. Oh, assuming—not to invite myself over, or anything.”

“Not at all, quite all right,” Aziraphale assured him, his chest tight. “Well, I’ll—I’ll see you over there.”

“I know the way,” Crowley said, and slithered into the Bentley.

**“I’m sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.”  
_little beast — richard siken_**

“The thing is,” Crowley was saying, his second glass of wine sloshing as he gestured, “the thing is, everyone else _knows_ already. I haven’t told the story in a while, and I’m bound to fuck it up. Or worse, I’ll get it too right, and you’ll hate me.”

“My dear—” Aziraphale wanted to say _I could never hate you_ , but he was on his second glass as well, the bottle they’d opened dangerously close to empty on the table, and he just _knew_ that if he said a thing it would come out far too warm, far too honest. “You don’t have to tell me a thing.”

“Everyone else knows,” Crowley said, and set the glass down. “I’d rather you hear it from me.”

Aziraphale’s low-beamed flat was still too empty, the walls still naked, but there were little things gathering in the corners at last. A bushel of lavender hung upside down to dry by the window for a future lavender syrup, its gentle scent no match for the warm vanilla wave that rose from downstairs. A pile of books from Anathema sat behind them on the kitchen table and an oversized wicker basket rested beside the overstuffed armchair, storing rough-knit blankets. It wasn't much, but it was coming together.

Crowley made him feel out of sorts here, though. He’d come in, looking with more curiosity at all the blank spaces than the cluttered, and through his eyes Aziraphale saw the missing pieces: no bookshelf yet, no coffee table, just a battered Formica kitchen set in a strange spearmint green and the useless little tchotchkes he’d taken pity on at the second-hand store. The battered couch was squashed and ancient, perfect for naps but definitively lumpy.

“I thought you worked at a bank,” Crowley had said mildly, and Aziraphale had reached for the bottle opener.

“I _did_ work at a bank. And then I bought a bakery. And there’s no IKEA out here, so—”

“IKEA?” Crowley scrunched his face. It shouldn't have been attractive. “Heaven forbid. I just meant—you do _know_ about the Internet, don’t you?”

Aziraphale had signed and handed him a glass. And so on. Now they’d each had two and had gone from a rundown of Adam’s detention career (Crowley) to the significance of pastry in various religions (Aziraphale) to an impassioned campaign for the addition of more plants in the flat (Crowley again).

And then, on the hesitant verge where Aziraphale almost ruined everything by telling Crowley a bit more about himself, Crowley began his own story.

“I _was_ a doctor,” he admitted, once the last of the wine had been knocked into his glass by a tilting Aziraphale.

“You don't have to tell me,” Aziraphale rushed to say again. Crowley had sunken into the couch, wine glass pressed lovingly against his chest to keep from spilling.

“You’re an angel. But it’s a fact of life. I lost my license, that’s always going to be true now. I _was_ a doctor but I lost my license and you would not _believe_ how long it takes to do a thousand hours of community service.”

“That is a lot,” Aziraphale agreed cautiously. “But community service, it’s not—”

“Not jail? No. Not that I shouldn’t have gone— I got devilishly lucky, and had a dearly expensive lawyer as well.” Crowley sighed and tipped his head back on the couch. Aziraphale longed to reach out and set Crowley’s tilting wine glass down, but Crowley still clutched it like a security blanket. “ I banished myself anyway. Figured I’d outrun my failure, bang out the community service, head back to London once I’d shaken the shame. Shadwell had my number, the old coot.”

Aziriaphale sighed. Shadwell had his, as well. London runaways. “You still intend to go back?”

Crowley’s head turned against the cushions. “That’s what you ask about? Not what I did to lose my license?” His eyes caught on Aziraphale’s. He’d put his sunglasses on again on the way over, but it was darker now, and he pulled them back off impatiently. Unleashed in all their overly-expressive butterscotch glory, his eyes searched Aziraphale’s, looking for a lie. Aziraphale held still, doing his best to project the calm patience he felt. The story of Crowley— it was a gift, and he intended to treasure whatever was given to him.

“You can tell me if you’d like,” he said mildly. “I rather thought that was why we were here, but I’m just as happy with the company.”

There was a pause, loaded, as something Aziraphale had said to be reassuring landed more like a flirtation. Neither mentioned it.

“My dad...” Crowley cleared his throat and looked away again, the weight of his eyes unpinned. “I grew up in Hell. I’m sure some poor sod has had it worse, but… it was certainly one of Hell’s circles. My dad was an addict, and he was all I had. Not a cute country club cokehead, like all the rich kids assumed in med school. He wasn’t even a dad so much, as a cheat and a thief and a strung-out lump that I had to feed and cover for. Before I was old enough to work I had to be a thief and a cheat too, or not eat when school was out.”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, reaching for the back of his cool hand and patting it carefully. His heart hurt for a precious little Crowley child, leaner than even now, nowhere near as loved as he deserved.

Crowley didn’t react to the touch: he didn’t seem to notice it, so far away were his eyes. “School had food, and occasionally helpful teachers, and the library was open late when I didn’t want to go home. The only jobs that I knew about were dealers and teachers and doctors, so I— I wanted to be something better. I wanted to be free.”

“You became a doctor,” Aziraphale suggested, lightly covering the ground of difficult years so that Crowley wouldn’t sink any further into the sadness that hung over him now. It was easy to see why Anathema hadn’t felt right sharing Crowley’s story.

“I became a doctor,” Crowley agreed, and his voice strengthened a little with the statement. “I built myself into someone determined and scrappy and willing to do whatever it took. Studied until my eyes burned. Signed my life away to tell people they were dying every day. And I did it. But the dark side of resilience and independence is the wall it builds around you.”

Aziraphale hummed. He’d built a wall around his truer nature for years, but he’d done it out of love and the obligation of family, of religion. Funny how many ways there were to imprison oneself. 

“I burnt out.” Crowley glanced back up, but it was like he didn’t see Aziraphale before his chin dipped back down. “After a lifetime of being alone, essentially— and after Da killed himself with drugs once I wasn’t around to watch out for him— working like a hound out of hell and then suddenly it was over, he was gone and I had made it, but I didn’t know how to slow down.”

Aziraphale frowned, suddenly knowing what was coming next. Crowley looked up and actually saw him this time, the eye contact catching and holding more deeply than it had any right to. In a heartbeat Azraphale could tell that they understood each other, that Crowley could feel his sympathies and his understanding. He could tell that Crowley hated himself, hated telling him this, but would say it anyway.

“I’m an all-in kind of bloke, so it didn’t take long for idle hands to take me too far. I didn't mean to fall. I just hung out with the wrong people.They say addictive personalities are hereditary, after all.”

“Did you hurt anybody?” Aziraphale asked quietly. There were so many ways that a doctor could hurt somebody, even if they weren't abusing any substances.

“No. Just myself, thank God.”

“Should you be drinking?”

“I should be in prison,” Crowley hissed. “I should be dead.”

“Crowley, no. Dead is… dead is _forever_.” Crowley caught the ragged edge on Aziraphale’s voice and cleared his throat, taking a deep breath that looked like a well-practiced calming technique. 

“I told myself I would rather die than become my father, but here I am,” he summarized, referring to himself with a flourish. “And now I stay busy with the business of reparations. It’s far from the flat I had, the friends I bought. But it’s also far from the dealers that I knew and the streets I remembered. Abominably fresh air, but it keeps me far from trouble. Now, I believe we mentioned dinner?”

“We did,” Aziraphale agreed placidly. He knew that Crowley had hit a limit on how much he could share, and the pain of pulling himself open still leaked out into the room, pooling on the couch between them. He let himself be guided away from every followup question that came to mind, the instinct to demand every bit of the story, to crawl inside the briefly-exposed space where Crowley’s heart shone through. But he was grateful for what he had been given, and he wanted to respect Crowley for sharing so much at all. After all, what could Aziraphale be to him? A safe-looking stranger? Someone he needed to confess to if he were going to have the occasional cupcake with his plucky mentee?

So he let the rest of the words wash away, and sat up straighter. “I think the pub must be open,” he suggested lightly. “And I believe they’ve got a prime rib on.”

Crowley smiled. His teeth were too sharp.


	4. Chapter 4

**“You try to warn him, you tell him  
you will want to get inside him, and ruin him,  
but he doesn't listen.  
You do this, you do. You take the things you love  
and tear them apart  
or you pin them down with your body and pretend they're yours.”  
_a primer for the small weird loves — richard siken_**

A dinner, then. Two quick lunches before Aziraphale had to hurry back to flip his sign to _open_. A walk with the dogs, a spontaneous and hilariously uncoordinated afternoon when he happened upon Crowley and Adam kicking a football back and forth.

Crowley had become a familiar part of Aziraphale’s Tadfield, buzzing at the borders of what started to feel like safety.

They would laugh, and squabble, and debate the merits of each menu entry in their increasing evenings at the Four Horsemen, making Tracy laugh as a team and fighting over the bill the way old friends might. It wasn’t quite enough, but it was easy. Or if it wasn’t _easy_ , exactly, it was… irresistible.

 _Crowley_ was irresistible, his low chuckle an addictive thing that Aziraphale couldn’t help seeking out. He could feel Crowley’s attention on him like a live wire, like a beacon under which he felt funnier, more attractive, more confident. More and more they parted with promises to meet again already in place. More and more Aziraphale was granted the shocking boon of Crowley’s uncovered eyes.

They exchanged phone numbers. They exchanged stories. Suddenly Aziraphale knew the names of Crowley’s old London frenemies and found himself sharing the pain of his own father’s passing.

But he hadn’t shared it all, not yet, and he was increasingly aware that telling himself Crowley wouldn’t be interested was just an excuse. Crowley, miraculously, _did_ seem interested in talking to Aziraphale, in frequenting his bakery and getting his reaction to fresh batches of animals at the shelter, and it felt unbalanced to know so much about his new friend’s fall from grace without sharing anything of his own dark history.

He didn’t want to lose that electric attention, but he felt sure it couldn’t last, anyway. He was just being greedy in stretching it out, and every day that ticked by turned him into a liar.

 _He’s only hanging out with you because you’re the only one who doesn’t judge him_ , he thought to himself, but that didn’t make him less of a coward for not submitting to judgement in return.

Aziraphale withheld the necessary reciprocity of his confessions through the fall, and the sturdy trees that lined each laneway were bare by the time the anniversary he’d been trying not to think about arrived.

He knew before opening his eyes that morning that he was destined for a cheerless day. He’d sent the requisite flowers and had silenced the requisite phone calls in advance. He had thought far enough ahead to shut the shop, at least, and intended to stay busy with his accounts and a few batches of dough.

It was a cold, blustery day, and the sound of the wind and miserable chill in the air suited his mood just fine. Aziraphale pulled on his thickest sweater, a stripey Pendleton made of Shetland wool, and briefly considered tipping a spot of whiskey into his morning tea.

He decided against it, though it felt a bit like delaying the inevitable, and headed downstairs to the shop.

The morning ticked away in slow-motion misery. Aziraphale ruined two batches of dough and burnt a third. He hated each new batch more than the last. He was slow to anger, but no stranger to sour moods, and he could all but feel a little grey rain cloud etching itself above his head. _Well, what do you know?_ he thought. _He_ could _be unhappy in a bakery._

He was hiding in the back kitchen from any hopeful passersby, and so ignored the jingle of the bell at first when he heard it. It jingled again, then jangled, with feeling.

“We’re closed!” he shouted, pushing the paperwork in front of him to one side. It toppled a mixing bowl, which clattered across the floor. Aziraphale groaned and shoved himself to his feet after it.

There was another knock, this one downright insistent. Aziraphale put the bowl down and sighed before he went into the front of the shop.

Crowley was there, peering through the door with both hands around his eyes. It was both better and worse than he’d hoped: Crowley was exactly who he wanted to see, and was also the last person he wanted to send away.

He rolled his eyes performatively, and Crowley cracked a grin as the door was unlocked for him. “Alright, angel?”

“We’re closed,” Aziraphale sighed, leaning against the door. Crowley, conversely, straightened up from his trademark lean, picking up the mood that Aziraphale was in at once. 

“Something wrong? I almost started throwing pebbles at your window.” Aziraphale cracked a smile, unable to help himself, and ran his palms over his own face while he tried to figure out how to answer. Crowley smiled back, reaching up to swipe away the flour that Aziraphale must have left on his cheek. “I can go,” he added, his hand falling away and his voice dropping to a private murmur. “It’s bloody cold out there is all, I thought I’d drop in for some coffee.”

“I can manage that,” Aziraphale said, giving in. “Come on in, then.” 

Crowley followed him in and began to help himself, perched on the countertop as he measured grounds. Aziraphale slumped against the counter next to him, watching the process in silence. Crowley punched a few buttons and waited for the dark stream of espresso to begin its trickle. Only then did he look up, catching Aziraphale’s eye once they were settled inside.

“Are we in a fight?” he asked, drawling it out so Aziraphale could treat it like a joke, even if Aziraphale knew him well enough to understand that it was a genuine question.

“Not at all, my dear.” Aziraphale patted his hand. Crowley’s hands were never quite warm, but they were especially chilly today from being out in the cold. He could feel guilt twinge in his gut at the touch — he couldn’t very well send Crowley back out there just to keep sulking. Crowley’s hands were clammy and long-fingered, hypnotically capable as he pulled out the sugar and cream. “It’s just… rather a cold day to be alone with one’s thoughts.”

The bakery phone rang. Aziraphale unplugged it.

Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Especially if the thoughts aren’t particularly warming. Shall we take this to go?”

Aziraphale glanced around at the floury ruin his usually-neat workspace had descended into. It was awfully tempting to just walk out. Crowley saw the hesitation on his face and squared his shoulders.

“Come on. We’ll go to mine.”

“Yours?” Aziraphale, for the first time that day, was properly distracted from his funk. He hadn’t seen Crowley’s home yet. It hadn’t even come up, despite all of the times they’d met up at the bakery or had a drink upstairs in Aziraphale’s flat. He’d assumed that the bakery, with its proximity to the rest of the town, was a more convenient meeting point. But Adam had barely mentioned it, and even Anathema had sent Aziraphale to the shelter when it came time to track Crowley down. Aziraphale pictured a sleek modern flat, like someone had packed up a place in London and brought it back in a perfect replica. He seized the curiosity as though it would save him. “If you’re sure.”

“Just get your coat.”

**“From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.”  
_detail of the woods — richard siken_**

Crowley’s Bentley groaned as it rumbled off the cobblestone laneway that wound through Tadfield and onto the packed-dirt drive.

He’d driven them to one of the small farms at the edge of town — the farms got bigger as one got farther out, the main lane becoming a gleaming roadway that streamed toward bigger cities once the thatched rooftops of Tadfield were left behind. This was smaller, closer, one neatly-tended grainfield that stretched from one stone border wall to another. The river disappeared from view here, green grass and a tree line in the distance promising its presence at the back of the property. An ancient silo sagged beside an ivy-covered greenhouse with whitewashed windows, a small garden between them that promised winter vegetables: kale, carrots, turnips burrowed warm into the ground. 

“You have a farm?” Aziraphale asked, bewildered. Crowley parked between the greenhouse and the garden, sliding out and coming around to open the car door for Aziraphale, offering a lanky arm to help him out. Aziraphale’s first step down sent dust up into his mouth, but Crowley seemed comfortable, despite the strange contrast of his flamboyant crocodile-leather boots against the honest earth.

“It’s not mine,” Crowley demurred, releasing Aziraphale to shut the car door. He led them to the enormous greenhouse, and Aziraphale followed apprehensively. “I take care of the plants, though, saves me paying rent. It’s why I came out here instead of some other small town— found a lovely older widow that couldn’t keep the place up. It was her late husband’s pride and joy, but she lives with the kids now. They come out sometimes, but it helps to have someone here, chase off the local teens.”

“It must be a lot of work,” Aziraphale said slowly, taking it all in. Small though it was, surely even a hobby farm was more farm than hobby. To his city eyes, it seemed overwhelming, although every place he looked was neat and tidily thriving.

“I’m not afraid of work,” Crowley said. _I’m atoning for my sins_ , he didn't say, though his pride and self-punishment were stamped on the land. He unlocked the battered greenhouse door and a grey-and-white blur came barreling out, heavyset and joyful as Lucy barked her welcome. “Alright girl, alright there, Lucifer.”

“You never told me Lucy’s name was Lucifer,” Aziraphale accused him, grinning as he stooped to scratch the devil in question’s ears.

“It’s her Christian name,” Crowley smirked, and tilted his head to invite him inside.

“Get thee behind me, foul fiend,” Aziraphale teased, and followed Lucy in out of the cold.

The first thought that Aziraphale had was that it was surprisingly warm. It went behind coziness — it was positively balmy, like an eternal summer captured within four thick glass walls. The size of a small flat, the greenhouse was jewellike on the inside, smudged glass walls offering pastoral views in four directions. A vintage stove pipe sat in the middle of a converted kitchen area, a strange collection of trunks and leather armchairs scattered over an eclectic layer of rugs that overlapped across the concrete foundation. The foot of a bed peeked out from behind a low wall, potted plants and medical textbooks and an ancient record player cluttering the path toward sleep. At once he could see why Crowley thought Aziraphale’s place was lacking decoration: each piece here was richly patterned or textured in a perfectly-coordinated chaos.

The second thought that Aziraphale had was that _of course_ Crowley didn’t invite people over. His very soul was written on every inch of this place. Or rather, drawn.

Propped against the walls, slumped against stacks of books, piled in the haphazard corners where furniture converged, were paintings — paintings of such violent energy and such similarity that they were obvious at once as Crowley’s.

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale exhaled, his voice far fonder than he’d ever allowed it. He knelt beside the stack on the table as Crowley flipped lights on and filled an empty takeaway container with dog food. He hadn’t taken his sunglasses off yet, and he busied himself pouring too much wine into empty jars — uncomfortable, but giving Aziraphale a moment to look.

“They’re no good,” he grouched. “You needn’t fuss.”

“They’re lovely, my dear,” Aziraphale insisted, and nearly gave voice to the _as are you_ that came to mind just after. He’d never seen someone paint the stars like this. They were swirling, haunting landscapes of the night sky, light pollution leaking up to stain the pinpricks of brilliant matter. The stars they’d never had in the city, all the more beautiful for the way that Crowley so clearly loved them. “I must buy one from you.”

“You certainly mustn't.” Crowley plopped down onto one of the armchairs and held Aziraphale’s glass out. Once Aziraphale accepted it and retreated to a chair of his own, Crowley stretched his legs out. Lucy curled up on his feet, which he pretended to hate. He was easy to read now: outwardly rejecting compliments and affection, as though he hadn’t brought the shelter’s most woebegone resident home to soothe. As though he hadn’t done the same for Aziraphale.

“She’s a lovely girl, you should keep her for good,” he mused, seeing how right Crowley looked here with his feet weighed down by dog, wine in hand. 

“I’m not stable enough,” Crowley said immediately. “She ought to be with a proper family.”

“I don’t think she minds,” Aziraphale chided lightly, once his mind stopped going sideways at the mention of family. He didn’t like the ways Crowley thought of himself — but then, Crowley didn’t know how brave he was compared to Aziraphale. He supposed it was time to tell him. He tipped half the wine back in one sip, and took Crowley’s raised eyebrows as an invitation to begin. “I’m sure we’re both grateful to be here.”

“Well,” Crowley said, flushing, casting about for someplace to reroute the compliment. “Er. I’m glad. Only it seemed like you needed to get out.”

“You’re secretly quite a thoughtful man,” Aziraphale agreed, and smiled when Crowley sputtered. “I’m afraid I, on the other hand, am being quite selfish today.”

Crowley’s face said he didn’t think that was possible, but Aziraphale had lifted one corner of the plaster off now, and he was going to peel it all away.

“It’s an anniversary, of a sort,” he said, launching into things with a lurch. “A bit of a dark day, historically speaking. I— well, first I suppose you should know I had a girlfriend at college. I was closeted, of course, and even to myself. I grew up in the church, and I loved the readings and the music and the community. Why wouldn’t I love a good Christian girl as well?”

“Why indeed,” Crowley said drily, but he had sat forward to listen, scratching Lucy’s ears idly.

“If I could have loved any woman…well, I tried, with Mary. She was my closest friend, and I confessed— oh almost everything.”

“You came out to her?” Crowley’s eyes were intent on him. How could such an old story still hurt so much to tell?

Aziraphale cleared his throat. They had been dancing through a light flirtation, a shared knowing, but he’d never said to Crowley anything so direct about his own sexuality. Aziraphale had been a coward, as usual, but he’d been bullied enough to know how much was obvious.

“Nothing so honest. The words one used, in the church, were _struggling with same-sex attraction_ , and I confessed I was. She comforted me. She knew it was as unacceptable as I did.”

Crowley set his wineglass down, sensing the axe about to fall. “So what happened?”

“We slept together. Just a handful of times, teenage fumbling. Her little rebellion. My ache to be normal, to want a woman the way I was supposed to.”

“What _happened_?” So close the hurt of it, and Crowley had smelled the blood in the air. 

“She got pregnant,” Aziraphale bit out, confirming the dark suspicion on Crowley’s face. “We got married. To have one without the other was unthinkable, and I couldn't ruin her life in that way. The pregnancy — she was glowing pregnant, just beautiful, but it didn’t… well, nothing came of it. God’s little lesson for us, everyone said. I think she was relieved, but I was devastated.” The one chance he’d thought he’d had at a family, as a closeted creature of sin, ripped away as punishment for his forbidden thoughts. He stared at the painting nearest to him, drawn into the smeared points of light.

Crowley rested his elbows on his knees as though he wanted to get even closer. Aziraphale could feel his presence, unwavering, but was too lost in the past and the ersatz stars. “And then, to divorce?” he continued finally. “Just as unacceptable to her family as not marrying would have been. We never touched again, although we lived together, kept up appearances. I took up accounting, another pre-approved plan for my life. She tried to date a little, but never found a worthwhile man who could look past her marriage. I wish things could have been simpler. I wish we had been brave enough to let go of each other, but as much as we wanted more for each other, we were too afraid for ourselves. I think she could have been so happy with someone else… I wanted her to be loved that way, she deserved it, even if I didn’t feel like I did. I wanted so badly to be the one to love her, but… but.” He cleared his throat and braced hard for the rest. “I can never forgive myself for trapping her in that way. When we were only twenty-nine, she was killed in a car accident. And she wasted her life with me.”

“I’m so sorry. Aziraphale. You’re not a waste of life.” Crowley murmured, but Aziraphale shook his head.

“She was so kind, so intelligent and so much more than she allowed herself to be. We were the couple everyone relied on in our church, and she helped so many people. It wasn’t her fault her husband couldn’t give her what she needed.” There had been moments of real joy: community potlucks, the dance at their wedding, road trips to the coast. But it had all been washed away by the pain. The guilt. Aziraphale’s eyes were wet: he dug the heel of his palm into them until his eyes protested with flares of light. 

“After she died, I kept thinking about what could have been, had we been a little braver. I came out at thirty officially, and I lost everyone else. The church, all of our friends. They saw how I had betrayed her, and I could hardly argue. My stepfather, my mother… they saw no place for me there, anymore. I tried to find a new church, but it didn’t feel like home. Nothing did. I tried the gay bars, but it was too much, it was overwhelming and scarier than loneliness. I spent the next few years in bookstores, drinking tea and drifting miserably about. I took a comparative religion class, and then a pottery class, and finally I tried baking. It’s the perfect thing. I can focus on something simple and end up with a physical result, every second and ounce significant. It makes sense in a way most things simply don’t. The right cake can make someone’s day, like a fresh turnover can make a morning special. Maybe it’s too simple, or unambitious, but it’s the most satisfying thing I’ve learned to do.”

He choked. It was so hard to flip that stone over, to expose those buried feelings, and they flooded through him as fresh as ever. It was why he didn’t take the calls anymore, or even unearth the memories of a decade wasted: putting it back to bed was harder every time. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m so soft.”

“Hey.” Crowley dislodged the dog from his feet and slid to the floor, kneeling before him. He reached out carefully, touching Aziraphale’s knee with the uncertainty of one who didn’t know whether his touch would burn. Aziraphale’s hand covered his and he held on tight. Crowley’s fingers slid between his, locking together gently. “Softness takes strength. I tried to be tough for years, and just wound up mean. You clearly did love her, as best you could. And if anyone wronged anyone, it was a fucked-up church that failed you both.”

“They were just—”

“No.” Crowley was soft but firm in his blasphemy. “I’m sorry for your loss, angel. But I’m not sorry you wound up here.”

Aziraphale keeled over, his forehead on his knees, resting hot and sticky against their connected hands. He was exhausted suddenly, like he’d poured out everything he had in him and left his ghosts on the ground between them. Crowley stayed quiet before him, absorbing everything Aziraphale had purged, keeping it safe.

“You can stay at my place, if you like,” he offered quietly, as though certain that Aziraphale would say no. But Aziraphale nodded against Crowley’s knuckles. He’d been alone for so long. If Crowley could tolerate one more stray, it was surely more than he deserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh sorry it's so angsty! Things should be okay now that they've ripped the trauma bandaids off. I'm so excited about Crowley's place! I hope you like it, I got obsessed with the idea of him living in a converted greenhouse like some forgotten thing, surrounded by plants and with a glass ceiling to look up at the stars.


	5. Chapter 5

**“We were in the gold room where everyone  
finally gets what they want, so I said _What do you  
want, sweetheart_? and you said _Kiss me_. Here I am  
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome  
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,  
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.  
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”  
_snow and dirty rain — richard siken_**

" _Thank you for being a friend_ ,” the cheerful voice was singing, while scenes of Miami in the 80s reflected in the greenhouse window. " _Travel down the road and back again._ "

He was on the same couch he’d broken down on the night before, now weighed by blankets and a snoring dog but feeling worlds lighter. If one didn’t count the hangover. The television was invisible from behind the divider the bed hid behind, and the screen was throwing a reflection out that flipped the forms of Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose as they hugged. Aziraphale sat up, offering an apologetic pat as Lucy groaned about being disturbed.

“Crowley?” There was no answer. Aziraphale heaved himself up, hesitant to disturb, but perhaps Crowley couldn’t hear him over the television. He knocked on what he’d thought was a dividing wall and noticed in the daylight that it was the back of a bookshelf. When he peered around it, the bed and television were tucked neatly behind it in a cozy nook, the space next-like and perfect for reading all day. But the bed, Crowley’s blankets kicked down and missing the matching red duvet that Aziraphale had woken up under, was empty.

The TV played on. Aziraphale found a small restroom behind the only real wall in the place and tidied up, feeling like he was spying on something unbearably intimate to see Crowley’s toothbrush atop the sink. The greenhouse’s enormous window panes opened the tiny bathroom to the land, a salvaged clawfoot tub sitting beneath the glass-framed trees. He approached the tub guiltily, picking up the soap on the windowsill and bringing it to his nose. It was musky and feral, exactly as Crowley smelled, patchouli and golden amber and vetiver and fig. He set it down. He had been allowed to stay the night, out of pity and more friendship than he was due. It wouldn’t do to repay that kindness with some creepy obsession, even though it did no good anymore to pretend he wasn’t slightly (to irrepressibly) enthralled with Crowley.

Crowley. Who had held his hand and listened, had taken him home on a bad day and let him stay. Aziraphale was used to feeling uncomfortable around men — sure he would be seen as too queer, or if that was okay, would be too unappealing for anyone with the same tendencies. He’d grown to like himself in solitude, but with Crowley, none of those old insecurities came rushing back. He just felt more and more comfortable. More and more like himself. More and more like _himself_ was enough.

Enough for friendship, anyway. A friendship that grew more precious all the time, and he wouldn’t break it by holding on too hard.

He spotted Crowley once he came back out. Aziraphale paused in the middle of one of Rose’s St. Olaf stories, the neat little box that he’d tucked his feelings into creaking back open as he folded the duvet cover up to place on the back of the couch. The tree line down by the river was lit by morning now, and a mist rose up between the crumbling stone wall at the border and the low fences in between. Water sparkled behind rustling trees, and the fields opened up to scattered grasses and rows of leaves. The mist hung low to the ground and Crowley came up the land, the voltaic energy of him abuzz against the green and brown. His burnt red hair and the lenses of his dark glasses glinted like the river, like dew, and he looked somehow right here. Despite his city clothes and the street-smart way he carried himself past flower and fern, he seemed comfortable amidst land that he knew, land that knew him.

Crowley came up the land and Aziraphale’s hands fumbled on the blanket. He could see the moment that Crowley spotted him, but he was spared an awkward moment by Lucy. Aziraphale was obliged to let the excited dog out, and then Crowley was close enough to laugh and help, and then they were both standing in the doorway, watching her wriggle ecstatically in the grass.

“I took care of the shop,” Crowley offered, without an uncomfortable _good morning_. “Adam went round, put a sign that said you’ll open later. Is that okay? I can have him change it.”

“That was good of him,” Aziraphale said, pleased and surprised. “Later sounds perfect.”

“Gives you time for breakfast first,” Crowley agreed, darting a look over at him, hands in his pockets. “Maybe something you didn’t have to bake?”

“ _Gracious_ , yes.” Aziraphale lit up and Crowley smirked. Before them, Lucy barked. Behind them, the Golden Girls were trying an aerobic class, laugh track blaring.

At the Four Horsemen Crowley ordered black coffee and wheedled his way into a shot of whiskey. Tracy _tsk_ ’ed and then pulled it from her apron pocket, offering no reaction to their arriving together.

Still, Crowley rolled his eyes once she left to fetch Aziraphale’s breakfast. “She’ll have half the town believing we’re in the midst of a torrid love affair by teatime.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale didn’t know how to respond to that. “Only half, though.”

“W-ell, the other half likely thought it already.” Aziraphale blanched and Crowley shrugged, misinterpreting his face. “Small town. More mouths than gossip to go around, like I told you.”

“So you said, I suppose.” It did look a little something like the truth: that Aziraphale had slept over, that the two of them had been up late together. Platonically, though. In the worst possible way.

Never one to pass up sweets, as they were now a matter of professional interest, Aziraphale had ordered scones and jam with his milky-strong tea. It was an incredible luxury these days to indulge in something he hadn’t baked himself, and Aziraphale couldn’t help the small sound of appreciation that escaped him upon his first Devon cream-loaded bite.

Crowley shot him a look over his sunglasses, and Aziraphale quieted, blushing. 

“You won’t help the rumors if you make pornographic sounds in public,” Crowley advised.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Aziraphale said primly. “Anyway, I’m done caring what other people think of me. It’s exhausting.”

“Hmm.” Crowley stood to get Tracy’s attention. “Oi! Woman! This angel would also like some whiskey.”

Aziraphale laughed and held out his teacup when she arrived, aware of every other diner looking over. “Quite right, dear lady.” He lifted his voice a bit to match Crowley’s dramatic tone. “This awful man has driven me to drink.”

Tracy rolled her eyes at both of them and splashed some into his cup. “Don’t screw up my bread, mind.”

“If I do it shall be entirely his fault,” Aziraphale told her solemnly. He was pleased when Crowley laughed.

“You’re a bit of a bastard,” Crowley said admiringly. They clinked their glasses together and drank.

“Needs must,” Aziraphale shrugged, his chest tightening with gladness. “Anyway, what’s the point of owning the place if I can’t do something a real boss would fire me for?”

“If you’re fucked up enough you don’t notice being fired until the tribunal,” Crowley said in a doleful tone. Aziraphale pointed a finger accusingly.

“No dark pasts until after breakfast. Spoils the meal.”

“I’m not even eating,“ Crowley argued, though he was clearly just fighting for sport. His expensive sunglasses didn’t quite cover the crinkle of his smile.

“Well, you ought to be. A good breakfast makes for a good day, according to my _beloved deceased wife_.” It was a long shot, and his stomach twinged, but Crowley’s eyebrows shot into his hair and his responding grin was feral, impressed. 

“Bastard,” he repeated, sounding awed. “Okay, no dark pasts until after breakfast. Tracy!” He shouted even louder this time, and they could hear her groan in response from across the room.

Aziraphale hid his smile in his mug.

****

**“Actually, you said _Love, for you,  
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s  
terrifying. No one  
will ever want to sleep with you._”  
_litany in which certain things are crossed out — richard siken_**

“What about the library?”

“Woefully unappreciative of my literary opinions.”

“Local political campaign?”

“No good, the politicos of this town have no respect for good propaganda.”

“Retirement home.”

“Oh!” Crowley perked up at that. “I liked that, actually. Got along famously with some scandalous old biddies. It’s their fault I’m banned now, really.”

Aziraphale rumpled the paper as he tilted it down to frown. “Is it, now.”

“ _They_ asked me for the rubbers, I’m not _rude_.”

Aziraphale resisted the urge to tell Crowley that the Lower Tadfield Rest Home wasn’t his personal episode of _Golden Girls_ , but it was a close thing. They’d camped out in the animal shelter’s dog-scented office with hot drinks after Crowley locked up, hiding from the light rain that had arrived with the weekend. Crowley, currently covered in kittens as Aziraphale read out the volunteer opportunities in the paper, was doing his best to look innocent. He nearly pulled it off, but Aziraphale knew better. Crowley was a testy, too-skinny demon of a man, all black-clad limbs and pointy words and elbows. If there was an innocent bone in his body, it was broken.

Crowley had taken to haunting the shop regularly between his gigs and due dates, tempting Aziraphale out to the Four Horsemen more nights after work than not. They’d stay late, then walk back in the dark, arguing and drinking in turn. Crowley did indeed have plenty of opinions, both literary and otherwise, but no matter how fierce their bickering got he would always come back the next day, often with Adam in tow.

Adam made it easier. Adam, the grumblings of Shadwell, the ins and outs of customers, the visits from Anathema were all unspoken barriers, making their time together easier. When they were alone, like now, things were different.

A current painted the air electric between them, a low soothing buzz that powered something indescribable. Aziraphale had been alone for years, but now his days felt like they only started when Crowley sauntered in through the door.

He hadn’t been back to Crowley’s oasis of glass and greenery yet, but he could tell when Crowley had come straight from home, the calmness of that place still carried within him. He was more frazzled after a day of volunteering, seemingly reminded of the reasons he had to sign in and sign out and work at making good.

They had plans to go to dinner, back in what Aziraphale now thought of as their usual booth. Crowley rarely seemed to eat, but was happy enough to dig into the extras that Tracy brought Aziraphale, eager to show off whatever she’d paired with his savory loaves and cheesy buns. 

Tonight, though, Crowley seemed restless. He hadn’t shared the reason why, but his agitation grew with each rustle of the paper. 

It was only when a kitten sank its needlelike claws into Crowley’s chest and he swore, sitting up quickly enough that the kitten stuck in for the ride, that Aziraphale bridged the topic.

“Are you quite alright, my dear?” he asked mildly, watching as Crowley dislodged the kitten with a gentleness at odds with the words he was hissing.

“Spiffing,” Crowley growled, then calmed himself, the effort visible. “Sorry, angel. No, I’m— itchy. I’m just itchy.”

“Hmm.” Crowley didn’t talk about his past addiction often. Aziraphale had always assumed he just preferred to keep it in the past, but perhaps he’d never had anyone to talk about it _with_. “Anything I can do? I’m good for a listen.”

“Thank you. No, I need something else. A distraction.” Crowley’s gaze dipped down Aziraphale’s body, then tore away just as Aziraphale began to blush. “Let’s go somewhere.”

“Where?” The Horsemen? They’d been just the night before. But Crowley was already getting up, scooping kittens into a carrier to bring them back to their beds.

“No, just _somewhere_. A drive. Will you come? I’ll drive, it will keep me busy.”

“Of course.” Aziraphale helped him tidy up. He was happy to go along with whatever would help. Crowley’s energy was near-manic suddenly, and he could hardly leave him alone with it. They weren’t so far from London, after all, that one bad day and a handful of motorways couldn’t bring Crowley back there.

And indeed, when they climbed aboard the Bentley after a quick stop at the bakery, Crowley’s eyes went first to the left turn out of town. It seemed a great force of will when he turned toward the country, glancing first at Aziraphale’s face.

They drove for a while in what might have been silence if it weren’t for Freddy Mercury. Queen seemed Crowley’s constant companion, and it did quite well to fill the air as Tadfield became a collection of dollhouses in the rearview mirror. Aziraphale hadn’t gone so far this way before, and Crowley perked up when he mentioned it.

“Goes all the way to the shore, if you go on long enough,” he said cheerfully, tapping on the steering wheel as he took them past farm and field. “Although I suppose you could say that of any road.”  


“That presumes that every road is connected in some way or another,” Aziraphale pointed out. “Although I suppose they are.”

“Interconnectivity,” Crowley agreed, pleased. “Quite. One long string of veins on the map. Minus sea travel, unless you’re looking for a swim.”

“I certainly am not,” Aziraphale said, peering dubiously at his brown woolen trousers, his olive-green peacoat. “I’m just here for the mad driver.”

This time Crowley’s eyes on him were fond. “I’ll just slow the old girl down, eh?”

“You do go fast,” Aziraphale agreed softly, taking in the brush rushing by. Too fast for him. But here he was along for the ride anyway.

They stopped at a petrol station that looked like it was right out of a Hopper painting, dead fields of summer flowers making it the only thing in sight. Crowley picked up an out-of-date gossip mag and a pack of musty cigarettes, lighting one as soon as he pulled back onto the road.

“Eugh, that’s awful,” Crowley decided immediately. Aziraphale dug through the basket he’d packed at the bakery for a drink. He handed over a small sparkling water, and Crowley took a sip gratefully. He gargled and spat out the window, pulling a face. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“You’re itchy,” Aziraphale supplied. He didn’t quite know what Crowley was going through, but he thought he had some idea. He’d spent ten full years trying to fill the split inside of him. But right now, along for the ride on a crisp autumn day, he was somehow content.


	6. Chapter 6

**“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.”**  
_you are jeff ― richard siken_

They wound up in a field between the road and the river, the Bentley parked beside a wall of flowers that hid them from everything but the moody sky. It was chilly enough by the water that Aziraphale kept his coat on, but Crowley had spread his out like a blanket. It didn’t quite fit them both, which the lean slant of Crowley’s shoulders attested to. He was sprawled out in the grass mostly, Aziraphale ensconced on the jacket with the collection of things he’d brought: little tarts, a baguette, some cheese and jam from the Angel Food fridge. He hadn’t brought any wine and the clouds threatened rain, but it was as close to Heaven as he’d felt in a long time.

Crowley threw a stone into the water, looking over with a grin as it splashed their shoes.

“You’re like a wicked child,” Aziraphale told him, and Crowley snickered. “Look out for ducks.”

“Ducks, eh?” Crowley ripped a piece of bread and tossed it after the stone. “Let them eat baguette.”

“Next time we’ll have to bring proper bird food,” Aziraphale mused. 

“Next time,” Crowley agreed, his smile turning softer. 

Crowley did his best approximation of sleeping for a while: he looked like he had slipped into hibernation, keeping perfectly still in the grass, but Aziraphale couldn’t help but feel like he was still utterly aware of his surroundings. Perhaps he was meditating. Either way it was nice just to be around him, to soak in their shared space as Aziraphale paged through one of the books he’d unearthed in the Bentley (his choices had been _The Screwtape Letters_ , _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ , and a dog-eared pile of Princess Di biographies. “She was the people’s Princess,” Crowley had sniffed, when he held one up. He’d gone with the first book.).

_“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one_ ,” Aziraphale read aloud, his voice a murmur lower than the nearby stream. “ _The gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”_

“Sounds right,” Crowley answered without opening his eyes. 

“Go back to sleep,” Aziraphale told him, turning the page. 

“‘M still itchy. Itches.” Crowley stretched out and made a big show of scratching at himself, the muscles in his arms pulling taught. Aziraphale reached out with the toe of his loafer to shove at Crowley, the brat. Crowley grabbed onto one of his ankles, holding it in a vicelike grip. “Oi, angel! You kicked me!” 

“I certainly did not,” Aziraphale told him. He pretended to go back to his book, but Crowley’s eyes were open now, gold slits behind dark glass. It was impossible to focus. The hand on Aziraphale’s ankle loosened, the contact going light but not disappearing. “Why do you call me that, anyway?” he asked, more as a distraction than because he needed an answer. “Is it for the bakery?” 

“Sure,” Crowley said too quickly, screwing his eyes shut again. “Yep, mm-hm. Bakery, let’s call it that. Besides, I’m sure it’s a safe bet that you wouldn’t love _Az_?” 

“Eugh,” Aziraphale said, with feeling. He turned another page without reading anything, focused on the burning heat of Crowley’s fingers. 

“Ira?” Crowley continued, gaining confidence back with each terrible suggestion. “Phale? Oh no, angel, no one calls you Phale, do they?” Crowley released Aziraphale and sat up, bringing a handful of grass up with him to toss onto the open page. 

Aziraphale slammed the book shut, sputtering about literary abuse. “You fiend. This is _your_ book.” 

“Which means I can toss anything I’d like at it,” Crowley argued. “Don’t be such a stickler, Phale.” 

“Do let’s not turn that into a thing,” Aziraphale warned him. He put the book down with the remains of their lunch, sensing the end of Crowley’s borrowed peace. “We don't all have catchy surnames to go by. Did they call you Crowley even in school?” 

“I begged them to, but no. It was Anthony, Tony, or AJ.” Sitting up, Crowley had his back to the river. He faced Aziraphale now, forsaking the view. He looked so beautiful like that, all sinew and tall grass surrounding him. A weak light had come through the clouds, and the gold tangled in Crowley’s hair, setting the copper flyaways aflame. Crowley’s view of Aziraphale couldn’t possibly be anywhere near as compelling. 

“What does the J stand for?” Aziraphale asked, before realizing that it must have been the _Junior_ to Crowley’s awful father. “Nevermind, you don’t have to—” 

Crowley cut him off with a complex noise from his throat. “It’s just a J, really.” 

“Alright,” Aziraphale agreed, and a lopsided smile slid onto Crowley’s face in response. Maybe Aziraphale was a fool for taking him at his word and following in Crowley’s trail when he fled his feelings, but it felt good to offer the acceptance that he’d never experienced elsewhere. It felt good to be with Crowley. 

“Alright,” Crowley echoed. “Wine?” 

“Goodness, yes.” 

They packed up the car together in silence, and Crowley swung a U-turn in the flattened grass at the side of the road, turning them back toward home. 

__

**“and this is the map of my heart, the landscape  
after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is  
a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me  
tight, it’s getting cold.” **  
_snow and dirty rain — richard siken_

“Hold it higher,” Crowley hissed, and Adam glared at him.

“This is child abuse, you know,” he said, but stretched onto his tip-toes.

“Oh, gracious, I think it looks perfect as-is, really,” Aziraphale fretted. He tried to lift the frame out of Adam’s hands, but Adam just stretched higher. 

“That’s as good as it’s gonna get,” Crowley announced. “Good frame placement, anyway. The choice of art could be better.”

“I think it’s incredible, my dear,” Aziraphale disagreed. Adam relinquished the frame with Crowley’s painting in it and went to claim his prize of chai and a cinnamon bun.

“Your parents are going to be furious that I fed you that before dinner,” Crowley grumbled. He and Adam had arrived at the bakery just after closing, following Aziraphale up to the flat to help fill the blank walls with some Crowley originals. It had taken weeks of Aziraphale trying to buy them, but Crowley had either been worn down or sufficiently flattered enough to let Aziraphale rummage through his stacks of canvas. Adam, a frequent addition to Crowley’s shadow, had tagged along for the ride.

“They’re my foster parents and they won’t care.” Adam sounded matter-of-fact about it, even through a mouthful of frosting. Crowley frowned at that, a quick, sharp thing. Watching the two together made Aziraphale ache a little. He could see what Crowley saw: a miniature Crowley, this one’s future still for the making. And he could see what Crowley didn’t see: the tough love and fierce protectiveness that Crowley had for the precocious Adam Young. 

Aziraphale sat back and sipped his own chai, absorbing the changes the pair of them brought to his flat. The flat ran the length of the entire bakery, a space that would be exorbitantly expensive back in London. Here it felt lonesome — an extra bedroom with no visitors coming to fill it. Aziraphale always haunted the same reading chair when he wasn’t in bed or at the bakery: one person just wasn’t enough to fill the entire place. It was nice to have this odd little duo here, squabbling and sniping like Adam wasn’t the only pre-teen in the room.

It was nice to have the additions to the walls, too, and nicer that it was Crowley’s brushstrokes on each one. Crowley’s hands had crafted these, his golden eyes capturing the stars in all their swirling beauty. The flat felt more like a home with the paintings up: with Adam there to help, with Crowley holding nails in his mouth, stripped down to a black t-shirt and faded black jeans to work.

Aziraphale cleared his throat and got up to refill Adam’s drink. It wouldn’t do to ogle Crowley so openly, and especially not in front of a child. 

Crowley had to take Adam home eventually, and the quiet when they left was suffocating. Aziraphale tidied up a bit. Admired the paintings. But in an hour he was left alone in the kitchen, staring out the windows at the streetlamp outside. He’d paused with his hands on the rim of the sink, leaning forward as though the universe would bring him what he wanted if he gazed into the night long enough.

He’d been alone for a long time. He’d liked the surety of being married, even though it was far from ideal. He missed the knowledge of another person, the sharing of space and the breaking of bread. The snatches of companionship that he got from Crowley shone brighter than a month of dutiful partnership, a year of solitary dwelling. It would be unaccountably greedy, to want it all of the time.

A rumble came down the street like the purring of an ancient jungle cat. A sleek Bentley pulled into the patch of light that the streetlamp cast, and the object of Aziraphale’s fixation stepped out onto the curb. Aziraphale’s stomach fluttered, watching Crowley saunter up to the door, then hesitate before ringing the bell.

Aziraphale buzzed him up and opened the door. “Did you forget something?” Crowley was leaning against the doorframe with his hair askew, his sinful tee covered up by a slim canvas jacket. He looked delicious.

Crowley grinned. His eyes, free from sunglasses in the evening dark, seemed nervous, but his smile was cocky as ever. “Forgot to drink your wine. Okay if I come back in?”

“Please do.” Aziraphale threw the door open and stepped back to let him in. “Red or white?”

“What goes best with cinnamon buns?”

“You just love me for my buns,” Aziraphale teased. He bit his tongue immediately, but Crowley laughed.

“What can I say? It’s good having a sugar daddy.”

Aziraphale threw the fridge door open a little harder than strictly necessary in his quest for a chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Crowey followed him into the kitchen, leaning against the kitchen island as Aziraphale sorted out the cork.

“Can I ask you a question?” Aziraphale poured the wine and looked up. It always burned to put himself in the wake of Crowley’s eyes, but he hadn’t expected the level of intensity he found there.

“Angel, you can ask me anything,” Crowley gripped the other side of the counter, his knuckles white.

“Is Adam okay? I trust you have an eye on the situation.”

Crowley made a sound, then took the glass Aziraphale offered him. He held it for a moment, then shifted, his energy calming. Perhaps he’d expected another question, but he considered this one seriously.

“He could be worse. The bare minimum isn’t enough for a kid, though. Especially a smart kid like that?” Crowley relaxed his grip on the countertop and rapped his knuckles against it. “He has _potential_.”

“He’s lucky to have you.” Aziriaphale knew Crowley well enough now to know that he’d cringe away from that suggestion, but it still upset him to see the thought crease Crowley’s brow.

“He could be luckier,” Crowley settled on saying.

“Oh, dear boy,” Aziraphale murmured, his smile wry. “Who among us couldn’t?”

**“Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars  
** **for you? That I would take you there? The splash  
of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?”**  
_snow and dirty rain — richard siken_

It was well and truly cold these days, the trees stripped of leaves and the sky already threatening snow. Adam’s fall semester was well underway, and Crowley often brought him to the Horsemen for collaborative homework help. Crowley was good enough with the sciences, but Aziraphale double-checked his history homework, Anathema proof-read essays, and Tracey was a dab hand at arithmetic. “It’s all the bills, love,” she’d say modestly, but calculating tips couldn’t have been where she mastered the concept of prime numbers. 

And in the meantime, Aziraphale had built up a clientele he was proud of. Tracey and Shadwell had spread the word about the bread he was providing, and he’d landed contracts with a couple of other restaurants in the surrounding towns. He’d even taken some private clients, although his biggest orde yet had him regretting that decision.

“Who gets married in October?” he asked Crowley in despair. Crowley had called to ask if he’d make it to the Horsemen, but Azirapale was knee-deep in unfolded boxes and half-baked cupcakes. The wedding cake itself was half-erected before him, two tiers ready and two to go. He hadn’t even begun shaping the flowers yet that would decorate its surface, and his hands threatened to be too shaky for that fine detail work after his third cup of coffee. “What do they find romantic, the dead leaves? The grey skies?”

“It’s good weather for staying in snuggled up,” Crowley suggested. “But if you’re too busy, scrap dinner. I think Tracey’s got a questionable soup on, anyway. Some sort of fish chowder with the leftovers from yesterday.”

Aziraphale made a longing noise at the thought of dinner, chowder or otherwise. “You know what I miss? Sushi. Local trout is all well and good, but there’s nothing like a proper chirashizushi.”

Crowley laughed. “You can take the man out of the city, but you can’t take away his taste buds. Good luck burning the midnight oil, angel. Don’t forget to eat something eventually.”

“Thank you, my dear.” Aziraphale hung up and threw himself into his work. For all the complaining he felt free to do on the phone with Crowley, he still enjoyed the process. He just needed a few more hours…or an extra set of hands.

The shop had been closed for hours when he heard it. The Bentley's hum, Crowley’s quick knock. The sounds were familiar now, and he was smiling before he even opened the door.

“What in heaven’s name are you doing here?” It had been some time, so he expected that maybe Crowley would have dropped by after getting dinner on his own, but Crowley held a takeaway bag aloft between them.

“There’s a sushi spot in the next county, did you know? Lucky bastards.”

“Oh, _Crowley_.” Aziraphale beamed and moved away to allow Crowley to come in. He seemed so pleased with himself, slinking in like a cat with a prized catch, and Aziraphale felt the swelling in his chest that said _kiss him kiss him_ , a familiar feeling that burned a little more each time he swallowed it down.

Aziraphale perched on one of the bakery stools, and Crowley sat atop the counter, swinging his feet. A small fortune in fish and rice was laid out, and soon Aziraphale lifted his first soy-soaked bite to his mouth with chopsticks. He practically moaned in delight, and Crowley’s gratification was palpable. “My dear, you must have driven for ages. I can’t thank you enough.”

“‘S no trouble.” Crowley shrugged and ate a piece of nigiri with his fingers, licking them clean. Aziraphale pinked and glanced away. A mountain of work remained all around them, but it was lovely to have the break, and more lovely still to be in Crowley’s company.

“It certainly was, and I appreciate it all the more for your effort.” Perhaps it made Crowley uncomfortable to receive compliments, but Aziraphale was determined to provide some exposure therapy. “You’ve given me the boost I needed to get this done, I should hope.”

“You don't need an extra set of hands, do you?” Crowley offered. He sounded hesitant, but Aziraphale beamed at him. “I mean, ‘m sure I’d just get in the way, but maybe… dishes?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale told him, “it's you who ought to be called an angel.”

Crowley screwed his face up, but Aziraphale didn’t care. He would rain down as much acclaim as Crowley could handle, until he believed he was deserving of it all. Because he was absolutely wonderful. Aziraphale adored him fiercely. It was hard to believe he’d spent so many years without Crowley’s snide little asides, without his company on random weeknights to drink or eat or gossip mercilessly about their neighbors. Anathema was dating someone new, and Crowley made increasingly filthy guesses about what could have attracted her to the poor dull boy as they worked. Aziraphale let his last two cake tiers cool and set about piping flowers, and Crowley packed away box after box of perfect cupcakes.

It felt intimate but comfortable to have Crowley in the kitchen — more intimate than drinking with him upstairs, somehow. Crowley had flipped Aziraphale’s shop speakers over to Queen, and Freddy Mercury crooned on low as they worked. Aziraphale couldn’t help but think about the other time Crowley had come behind the counter — had soothed his burn, had fled the scene. There were no more secrets now, though, barring the astronomical crush that Aziraphale had had on him ever since.

The spark between them was still undeniable. Aziraphale wondered what would have happened if they had acted on it immediately, had recognized it for what it was from the first moments they were alone. Instead Azirahale had let doubt creep in, and now he was too afraid to be wrong, to be left alone sushi-less and swamped with icing flowers.

Crowley hummed as he worked. Flour had found its way onto his tight black trousers and the grey apron that Aziraphale had handed him. Aziraphale, in its apricot-colored twin, had never seen anyone make an apron look so good.

He nearly ruined the top layer of the cake, too lost in fantasies of Crowley’s hips under his apron, of his lean arms shifting as he folded box after box. 

Crowley looked up and caught him staring. Before Aziraphale could blush, Crowley flashed his devil’s grin. “How’s it coming, then?”

“Nearly there, thanks to you.” Aziraphale budged down a bit when Crowley sauntered over to inspect his work.

“Hmm.” Crowley made a show of studying the cake, as if Aziraphale hadn’t been painstakingly assembling it next to him for the better part of the evening. Aziraphale had created an Eden of flowers across the wedding cake, every color of Monet’s garden in smears and swirls. The icing color shifted with each new crown of sugar, creating an edible watercolor of mouth-watering sumptuousness.

“Angel,” Crowley breathed. His voice had taken on a quality that felt raw, like the sight of Aziraphale’s handiwork had brought him back to that vulnerable place where they kept finding each other. “It’s beautiful.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, it—” 

“It’s not nothing,” he hissed. He slid behind Aziraphale and took hold of his shoulders, steering with them so that Aziraphale was facing the cake. “Look at this. It’s a piece of art. You _made_ this, and it’s going to make some lucky fuckers’ wedding day all the more special, because it’s a bit of you there. And _you_ are not _nothing_.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale breathed. The cake _was_ lovely, when he looked at it. It was honeyed and complex and overdressed, and he did see the best of himself in it, now that he looked. Was that how Crowley saw him?

Crowley’s hands squeezed his biceps, and a chin dug into his shoulder for a split second. Then he was released, left off-kilter on his own two feet. 

“And the frosting…” Crowley murmured, stepping around Aziraphale to swipe a fingerful off of the side of the cake and stick it in his mouth.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed, torn between anger and laughter. 

Crowley winked. “And it tastes heavenly.” 

Aziraphale smiled at him. He could tell Crowley expected more outrage at the teasing, in how his impish smirk faltered, but he couldn’t do anything but smile, caught up in an aching sort of happiness. 

Crowley smiled back, a split second that lifted the other corner of his smirk.

“Want to help me fix it? Won’t take a moment.”

“Nah.” Crowley clapped Aziraphale’s shoulder and turned to go. “I’m setting up the Tadfield water station in a charity marathon at bloody dawn tomorrow, I’ll leave you to it.”

“You’re an arsehole, Anthony J. Crowley,” Aziraphale told him, in a tone of voice that may as well have been _I love you._

“Takes one to know one, angel.” And off he went, into the cold and the dark, leaving Aziraphale stuffed and sated and safe as houses. In the background, Freddy Mercury sang about love.


	7. Chapter 7

**“O how he loves you, darling boy. Oh how, like always, he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around you in an act of faith against the night.”  
_you are jeff ― richard siken_**

Aziraphale’s favorite autumn hobby was new, but already well-established. He’d shut the shop for a late lunch, flip the sign over on the door, and then arrive at Anathema’s bookshop with two teas in hand. Sometimes she was free to chat — and she made for delightful conversation, nearly as wicked as Crowley — but sometimes she was working, and she’d thank him for her tea before running off to help somebody. He liked those days, too, because he’d spend his lunch hour with a book in the squashy chair she kept for tarot readings. Anathema kept a cheap wall of used paperbacks behind the newer hardbacks, tucked away in the warmth of the shop’s small reading corner. These were the ones she let him page through, and he’d read snatches of novels an hour at a time. Sometimes he would buy them and bring them home. She didn’t even like to let him pay for them, so he never let her know how often he would tuck his finished books back into the second-hand shelves. Dozens of them were old friends now. Today he’d picked one he’d read already back up, hunting down a particular line that he had liked.

He’d gotten caught up, of course, and was stuck into a re-read, tea warm in his belly. “ _I’m just thinking that would be pleasant,_ ” he read, “ _To be reading, say, out of a book, and you to come up and touch me – my neck, say, or my knee – and I’d carry on reading, I might let a smile, no more, wouldn’t lose my place on the page. It would be pleasant to come to that. We’d come so close, do you see, that I wouldn’t be surprised out of myself every time you touched._ ”

Crowley dropped onto the arm of the chair beside him, making Aziraphale jump. “Alright, angel?”

“Crowley, you startled me.” Aziraphale shut the book and leaned back, seeing the perfect man in upside-down angles. Crowley was close enough to smell, sweet and dark and resinous.

“I’m on a break; thought you would be, too. You should come by the blood drive. You’ll find the cookies insulting, but it’s for a good cause.”

“You can’t have my blood, Crowley,” Aziraphale told him sternly.

“Powerful magic, blood magic,” Anathema added, stepping out from behind a shelf to join them. Crowley straightened up a bit when he saw her, sliding one foot to the floor and freeing Aziraphale from the parenthesis of his body. She wiggled her fingers at Aziraphale and he handed her the book for restocking.

“Ah, that must be it,” Aziraphale agreed. Crowley’s thigh was still next to his arm, emanating heat through black denim. “He’s up to something wicked, no doubt.”

Crowley laughed. “Doubtless. By the pricking of your thumbs, something wicked et cetera.” 

“Less fun than the thumbing of pricks,” Anathema put in.

Aziraphale’s hand flew to his bowtie. “My _dear_.”

“The prudes in this town,” Anathema groaned, and turned to put the book away.

“Something’s wrong with that one,” Crowley said wisely, as though Anathema had left the room and not merely turned around. “I’m gonna go, then. Best to get all my vampire hours before I gotta pick up the kid from school. _And_ I’ve a writing gig to finish, I’m truly very pitiable.”

Aziraphale breathed easier once Crowley stood to go. “I’ll cry for you,” he offered. Crowley made a face and then was gone again, slipping out as furtively as he’d arrived. Aziraphale sat up, ready to leave, too. “Poor thing, he really is quite busy,” he said to Anathema — he knew better than to feed Crowley’s self-pity to his face, but Crowley did seem a little off these days.

Anathema turned back to him and fixed him with a look. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?” Crowley’s workload? Aziraphale searched her dark eyes, then blushed. Were his feelings where Crowley was concerned so obvious? “No.”

“No? He’s been wooing you as best he knows how for weeks now. Months. I never thought you were unkind, Aziraphale, but you really ought to put him out of his misery if you’re not into the scrawny bad boy type.”

“He — no.” Aziraphale had never taken drugs, but he felt sure that someone must have ripped reality away from him somehow, or perhaps from Anathema. Surely that couldn’t be true. Not Crowley. Not _Aziraphale_.

Crowley had just… trusted him when things were bad. Brought Aziraphale home with him when it was Aziraphale running on empty. Had given him art, time, standing breakfast dates, sushi from an hour away when he had to be up early. Jumped in to help, to tease, to pour matching glasses of wine.

Maybe that wasn’t nothing. But Aziraphale still fought to keep a chasm of hope from opening to its full dizzying depths inside of him. 

“I don’t want to see either of you hurt,” Anathema said gently, seeing the thunderstruck expression on his face. “Just… pay attention.”

“I’m afraid,” Aziraphale realized, and Anathema’s face softened. She kneeled in a pile of black tulle skirts and took his hands.

“Hey,” she said, tugging gently to catch his eyes. “He likes you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

“Is that Joshua 1:9?” he asked, startled out of his spiraling thoughts at hearing familiar old words come from a black-lipsticked mouth.

“I own a bookstore,” Anathema laughed, squeezing his hands. “I may have gotten around to a couple of the classics.”

**“The boy's no good. The boy is just no good.  
but he takes you in his arms and pushes your flesh around to see if you could ever be ugly to him.”  
_a primer for the small weird loves — richard siken_**

The thing was, it couldn’t be true.

Aziraphale took an uncharacteristic pause after his evening bath, looking himself over in the foggy mirror as he made use of his fluffy white towel. He was warm, smooth, and soft as a steamed bun — not what he’d call traditionally appealing. 

Alright, so his eyes were a lovely shifting blue, and the bones in his face spoke of the elegance of some distant past. He’d had a curly-haired, earnest sort of charm as a boy, and he could see the echoes of that in his fussy adult face. But the bags under his eyes outweighed his age, and the ballast of his body made complicated waves of unhappiness swell inside his chest. His legs were strong from carrying his weight, at least, and his arms were similarly built up by the physicality of his work — forearms made strong by a rolling pin, hidden biceps built for hauling sacks of flour. His cock was something of a point of pride for him, as well, though he’d hardly shared that aspect of himself with others. All in all, the man in his mirror wasn’t entirely _bad_ -looking. 

_You are not nothing_ , Crowley had said.

It was just… compared to him, Crowley was a world apart. Crowley looked like a wayward actor, from his sinuous limbs to his dark sunglasses to his long, twitching fingers. He had belonged to a world of flash London doctors and had surely ruled over them all, surely held court like an louche and errant prince. He was smart and quick and well-spoken, self-aware and self-effacing in a way that was funny, charming. Despite his aggressive brand of personal pessimism, it seemed impossible that anyone could ever dislike Crowley. He was just too _Crowley_ , and Aziraphale simply couldn’t believe that he felt the way that Anathema believed he did.

Sometimes the way Crowley looked at him did make sparks shiver through Aziraphale’s skin, but he put that down to his own crush, his own reaction to Crowley’s enigmatic golden eyes.

So it couldn’t be true. Anathema had to be wrong sometime. He’d never known it to happen before, but her spooky sense of observation had to fail sometime. Maybe Aziraphale’s desire was leaking out of him, staining every room that Crowley was in. Maybe Crowley was just too hard to read, like some coded letter in a language too strange and beautiful to be understood.

He didn’t go by the blood drive. Crowley had too much of him, already. More than anyone could ever want, of Aziraphale.

**“The way you slam your body into mine reminds me  
** **I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling,  
and they're only a few steps behind you.”  
_snow and dirty rain — richard siken_**

“I can’t eat this,” Newt was explaining to Tracey. “I’m a vegetarian.”

“It’s just _chicken_ , dear,” Tracey said to him again. Anathema shot a glare at Crowley when he snorted from their table – Aziraphale and Crowley’s table. The table they sat in, day in and day out, side by side.

“Just bring him some soup,” Anathema cut in, exasperated.

“It’s French Onion,” Tracey beamed.

“That’s got beef broth,” Newt protested. 

“That’s just _broth_ ,” Tracey complained. “I can’t talk to this boy.” Newt put his face in his hands and groaned. Anathema’s hand went to his back.

“Only pansies are vegetarians,” Shadwell put in from behind the counter. He was reading a Stephen King book and drinking a beer that was mostly foam. Aziraphale was pretty sure there was a hickey on his neck.

“Oi?” Crowley said, like it was a question. He gestured at _his_ chicken with a fork. “What d’you call this?”

“Chicken doesn’t count as meat, apparently,” Aziraphale reminded him. This kicked off another round of squabbling, Crowley’s voice getting louder and louder until Anathema lobbed her bread at him. Shadwell spilled his beer, Tracey shouted at _him_ , and poor Newt gave Aziraphale a resigned look that said _is this what I’m in for?_.

It was, but Aziraphale liked it. He liked the buzz of voices and the clash of ideas. It felt a bit like family — but a family where people were allowed to disagree, to have their own thoughts and express their opinions, whether they were correct or not.

He hadn’t thought Crowley would fit in here at first, but he was wrong: Crowley seemed as right as everything else, interjecting more ridiculous commentary every time the argument seemed to be dying down.

“Do you have grilled cheese?” Newt put in finally, and then Tracey went to get it, and Shadwell started grumbling about killer clowns, and Anathema had run out of bread to throw at Crowley.

Crowley pulled it apart with long fingers, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “This bread tastes healthy,” he told Aziraphale. “Is it your whole wheat?”

“It’s multigrain,” Aziraphale hummed. Anathema kept shooting him looks from the next booth, which he ignored. “It’s new.”

“I like new,” Crowley nodded. “I’m hip to the bread trends.”

“ _Hip_ to bread trends?”

“Gotta keep up with those bread trends, changing all the time, they are.”

They squabbled over the bill, and then left Tracy to her work, Shadwell to his novel, Anathema to her Newt, and Newt to his grilled cheese. The Horsemen stayed lit up in the night behind them, wind whistling around its stone walls in the dark. The creek wasn’t lit, and this far from the motorway, this far from train tracks and airports and city lights, it got darker with each step away from the pub. They slipped into the streets like a secret, side-by-side in the cobblestone road. 

Outside of the warm chaos of the Horsemen, they went quiet. The wind bit at Aziraphale’s overcoat and Crowley’s worn designer jacket.

“Back to mine?” Aziraphale asked. Despite the wind, his voice seemed too loud between them.

Crowley sighed. “Wish I could, angel. Got a meeting at the school in the morning. All these do-gooder folk love to be up at arse o’clock.”

“You’re one of the do-gooder types now, my dear. You’ve been busy lately, it seems.”

“Yeah, I- I’m almost done.” One car drove by slowly, pushing them to the side of the street. Crowley went quiet until it drove past, tail lights disappearing in the dark, and then he started talking faster. “I just can sense the end in sight, you know? That whole chapter, the up and down, the penance. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the regret, but—”

“But you learn to live with it,” Aziraphale agreed. His heart was beating in his throat. He’d never thought about what the end of Crowley’s community service would mean. It could be the end of his self-imposed exile. It could be the end of a lot of things.

They’d paused under a streetlight by Aziraphale’s turnoff, and they lingered now. 

“The school thing is a sort of fall formal,” Crowley said, which was possibly the last thing that Aziraphale would have expected him to add. He tried to adjust, to go with the change in topics even though he was dying to retreat toward home and wallow in his brand-new fears.

“Er— a dance? Like a leavers’ ball?” Aziraphale, of course, had gone to a series of private religious schools where dancing was strictly for weddings. He pulled his scarf up.

“It’s a dance,” Crowley confirmed, his shoulders hunched up. “They do one now and one at the end of spring term. Older kids. It’s Adam’s first year going, actually.”

“Ah, so naturally you had to step in to keep an eye on him.” Aziraphale smiled ruefully. Crowley was so transparent, even though he waved it off.

“Embarrass him properly, is more like it. I’ve been enlisted to chaperone.”

Aziraphale bit back his smirk. “And they trusted you to do so?”

“The chaperone's job is to see that no one _else_ is having any fun,” Crowley said severely. “But nobody chaperones the chaperone. That's why I'm so right for this job.”

Now Aziraphale let his laugh loose in the cold air between them. “Well, I should let you get a good night’s sleep so you can start planning this auspicious occasion.” 

“You should come with me,” Crowley said, then bit his lip with his too-sharp teeth as if he hadn’t meant to say it. “I mean, not to the party planning committee. To chaperone.”

Aziraphale had been noticing, idly, how cold he was. He forgot that now, a spark of something hot shooting up through him so that he straightened up and gave Crowley his full attention. “Are you asking me to a dance?”

 _He’s been wooing you as best he knows how_ , Anathema’s voice said in his head.

“To chaperone,” Crowley repeated. Even under the street lamp, it was too dark to see his eyes, but Aziraphale had become familiar with the anxious ways Crowley’s face could twist.

“I’d love to, my dear,” Aziraphale said, quiet under the sigh of the wind.

Crowley nodded sharply and turned to go. “Goodnight, then.” His voice was crisp, embarrassed.

Aziraphale hugged himself and watched Crowley go. He had to raise his voice now to be heard as Crowley all but fled, his saunter exchanged for a quick and hunched-over clip. “Goodnight!”

Crowley’s hand shot up and he hustled into the night. Aziraphale chuckled to himself, low and pleased. The town was cold and windy around him, but suddenly he was sure that he’d never felt so warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ups! Downs! Apparently it's fall now! What's gonna happen! Suddenly there's a dance??? Also it is NOT a plothole that Crowley parked so far away, he parked exactly as far as he had to in order to walk Aziraphale home, damn it. This is so self-indulgent for me I can't even tell you.
> 
> I stole Crowley's chaperone line from Jane Russell's character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for no other reason than my love for her powerful chaos bitch energy. If you aren't watching classic movies, you're missing out on some real zingers.


	8. Chapter 8

**He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand.**  
_anyway - richard siken_

Crowley had to be at the dance early to set up, so Aziraphale went to pick up Adam the next Friday night. Adam looked adorable when he emerged from the small, untidy house that Crowley had sent Aziraphale to, his wild dark hair slicked back like a greaser.

“Thanks for picking him up,” the harried woman who answered the door said, another child clinging to her leg. “It’s over by nine, right?”

“Quite right, my dear,” Aziraphale assured her. They were only walking over, and Adam could certainly have made it on his own, but he could understand the desire to keep eyes on a strong-willed twelve-year-old. “Crowley or I will get him back right after.”

“Or both of you, right?” The woman grinned conspiratorally, and all of Crowley’s mutterings about how the town perceived two single gay men spending time together suddenly made sense.

“Ew,” Adam said. “Let’s go.”

A baby started crying from inside. “Have fun!” the woman shouted, retreating back inside.

“Your mum certainly has her hands full,” Aziraphale remarked awkwardly. Adam scowled and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“My mum’s dead.”

“Oh, of course, I— I’m sorry.” The walk was short, Aziraphale silently panicking. He didn’t often get to talk to Adam alone. Every time felt important, like he was building Adam’s opinion of him a few minutes at a time. 

Adam sighed, the puff of breath visible in the night. “It’s fine. They do have their hands full, I guess. And my teachers are always calling them. Crowley says the Youngs are _doing their best_ and I guess he grew up worse and still became a doctor.”

“He did,” Aziraphale agreed carefully. It was heart-warming, seeing Crowley’s influence on Adam. But there was that dark unsaid thing, too, the fact that Crowley’s highest point had been a short spike in a long line of lows. “He cares about you a lot, you know.”

“He’s the only one,” Adam shrugged. “But I think I’m the only one who cares about him, too.”

The school loomed ahead. Aziraphale itched to pull Adam to a stop, to preserve this moment and scream that _he_ cared, that his life was better for both of them, for Crowley and the way that Crowley loved Adam, the importance of sending Adam into a better future than the present that Crowley’s past had bought him.

But all he did was shrug and say “I think you’re pretty cool,” and then let an embarrassed Adam move away, slipping into the school ahead of him and getting lost in the crush of his friends.

The gymnasium was packed with clusters of kids like Adam’s friends, grouped together in clouds of cheap cologne and repurposedq Sunday dresses. Benches had been shoved up against the walls and a disco ball spun slowly, rotating squares of purple light around the darkened room. Every surface seemed covered in tinsel, silver and purple and red and studded with adult overseers in every corner. Aziraphale looked around, and his eyes slid on their own to the center of his gravity.

Crowley was tucked away behind a giant speaker, looking deeply uncomfortable as he spoke with a teacher. In dark trousers and his flash boots, black nail polish and a red button-down shirt, he looked overdressed and utterly out of place and good enough to eat.

Aziraphale felt underdressed in his grey peacoat over a cream cable-knit sweater, his second-warmest boots heavy on his feet. But when Crowley caught his eye, his own lit up, his sunglasses gone in acquiescence to the mood lighting. Aziraphale stumbled up to him, compelled by those eyes, and Crowley reeled him in by the elbow with a grin.

“Oh, thank the devil that you’re here. They were about to have me ladling out punch.”

“Hmm.” There was a glint of silver at the chest pocket of Crowley’s shirt, betraying the flask there. “That sounds like a bad idea. We’ll have to find something else for you to do.”

“How’s this?” Crowley slid his hand from Aziraphale’s elbow to his wrist, turning it slightly inward and brushing his other hand against Aziraphale’s ribs. They were hardly touching, but then Crowley shifted his weight and Aziraphale followed and suddenly, they were dancing.

It was barely dancing, but still it couldn’t be anything else. Crowley steered him in a tight circle, giving Aziraphale a view of the party around him. Only a few brave children were dancing to the staticky oldies coming from the PA speaker, but none of them paid attention to the grown men in the corner, spinning slowly and laughing softly.

Aziraphale wondered how he’d gone so long, forty lonely years, without dancing with a boy. What if he’d done it from the start? What if he’d figured life out in time to free Mary, to find a good man young? What if he’d danced and kissed and had sex that felt sacred instead of obligatory? What if he’d had his own kid by now, a kid whose dances he’d chaperone just like this?

At least there was a _just like this_. A precious present, all the more precious for how new and how incredible it was, Crowley’s hands ghosting pressure against his wrist, encircling the wool of his coat.

The song shifted from bubblegum pop to Queen. “Might I assume you had something to do with this playlist?” he asked, but it came out quiet under the sounds around them. Crowley seemed to hear, though.

“It was one of the only things they trusted me with,” he laughed. “However did you guess?”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes at the speakers, making Crowley laugh again. But Aziraphale wasn’t laughing. This song was slower, dangerously soft. “I was born to love you,” Freddie crooned, the drumbeat matching Aziraphale’s heart. Then, the guitars, the song speeding up until Crowley slid his hand into Aziraphale’s coat to hold him properly. 

Any safe distance, any deniability slipped away. Aziraphale turned his hand, fingers sliding down as Crowley’s palm slid up and caught, their hands together and Aziraphale’s other hand landing at Crowley’s narrow waist. It was fast and silly and dizzying, and then it was slow and close even as the music hammered out its upbeat 80s joy.

Crowley was smiling, but his eyes were serious, flitting now between their hands and Aziraphale’s face — his eyes, his mouth, his eyes again. Aziraphale cleared his throat as the song faded out, leaving them holding each other in a dark corner, swaying in silence.

“Angel, I—” 

The next song came on, nearly unnoticed, but that wasn’t what interrupted the moment.

“Excuse me, Mr. Crowley,” came an icy voice. Another chaperone had appeared in front of them, the teacher from earlier, her face pinched. Aziraphale dropped Crowley’s hand and released him, but that didn’t seem to be what had her worried.

“What?” Crowley snarled, reeling his own hands back into his own pockets. He seemed to retreat back into his defensive self again, so cleanly that Aziraphale was able to see exactly how different the public Crowley still was from the softer, less snarky one that he got to himself now. His shoulders had climbed back to the sky, and he only tensed up tighter when she spoke again.

“Would you please come with me? It’s Adam.”

**There’s a part in the movie  
where you can see right through the acting,  
where you can tell that I’m about to burst into tears,  
right before I burst into tears**  
_dirty valentine richard siken_

They hustled down the halls, eerie and half-lit as the sounds of the dance faded behind them. Suddenly Aziraphale was furious with himself for the dance he’d been enjoying earlier. They’d let Adam slip away unchaperoned, and now he was following in Crowley’s stormy wake as he stalked down the hallway to the school office.

“What happened?” Crowley barked, swinging the door open as though he’d been there before. Another teacher stood between Adam and another child, turning in relief toward the interruption.

“Are you Adam’s dads?” Aziraphale’s heart skipped a beat, but she didn’t pause for affirmation or correction. “He got into a fight tonight. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to take him home.”

“We’re chaperoning the event,” Aziraphale objected, too thrown by her assumption to know the proper response.

“You’re relieved, then. Adam, we’ll discuss this on Monday morning.” She waved them out and focused on the other boy, who, Aziraphale could now see, had an icepack to his face. 

“Christ, kid.” Crowley took hold of Adam’s shoulder and steered him ahead of him, Aziraphale hurrying to open the door. Adam held his head up high, radiating just as much ferocity as Crowley was. “We’ve talked about this, I thought you were done fighting. Whatever these little arseholes are doing isn’t worth the trouble.”

“You don’t know,” Adam protested. His hair had gotten loose from the gel that had slicked it down earlier, one tuft sticking straight up.

“Then _tell me_ ,” Crowley hissed. They’d made it outside and the cool dark of the night made everything feel hyper-aware, as if the dancing and the music had been some alternate reality. This was reality, leaves underfoot and cold air and a sinking sense of dread.

“I don’t wanna.” Adam kicked at the leaves. Aziraphale ached for him. He didn’t want to send Adam home again, couldn’t let him go back inside, couldn’t detangle the twin pain that Crowley and Adam seemed to share.

“Adam, I know you wouldn’t get into a fight for no good reason,” Aziraphale found himself saying, his voice far kinder than Crowley’s frenetic concern. “If something’s going on at school we’d like to help. It might be good to have some people on your side if your par— your foster parents find out about this.”

Crowley shot Aziraphale a glance, but Adam seemed to crumple. “It’s just… it’s this one popular kid. I hate him. He made fun of me for being new.”

“Probably just jealous that you’ve been outside of this boring old town,” Crowley guessed. Adam nodded, then sniffled, wiping his nose on his hand.

“Yeah, so I didn’t care, but now he’s making fun of Crowley. All the kids know you’ve been helping out as community service, and he says you’re just some city druggie who’s gonna ditch me the second you can.”

Crowley stiffened. Aziraphale wasn’t sure which one of them he wanted to hold more. Perhaps both. He could see why Adam hadn’t wanted to share, seeing the pain etched in Crowley’s shoulders now. Pain that he could bring any hurt to Adam, could be a button to push. Adam could handle any insults that came his way, but Crowley leaving… Aziraphale shared the same fear. That same desire to defend Crowley from insult, even if Crowley called himself worse. They both wanted to keep him, and keep him safe from that poisonous self-hatred. It was strange to think of Crowley as more vulnerable than the defiant kid between them, but at the same time, Aziraphale had known that from the beginning.

“Only an idiot would ditch you,” Crowley managed. He seemed defeated suddenly, all of the mischief and intensity that he’d shown that night erased. “Come on. We can talk on the way home.”

“I’ll let you two go ahead,” Aziraphale granted. They needed to speak, and he would only be in the way. “I’m sorry about the dance, Adam.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Adam gave Aziraphale a swift hug that surprised him. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“I’ll call you,” Crowley murmured, and then looped his arm carefully around Adam to take him home. His eyes caught Aziraphale’s for one unreadable instant and then he turned away, his long fingers twitching on Adam’s shoulder.

**Some say God is where we put our sorrow. God says Which one of you fuckers can get to me first?**  
_war of the foxes — richard siken_

For the first time, Aziraphale went a week without seeing Crowley.

He went to Anathema’s at lunch and ate at the Horsemen and worked at the shop each day. He ran his errands and walked along the river and never, not once, did he see Crowley.

“Just sulking again, probably,” Anathema advised, when asked if she’d seen him.

“I hope he’s eating,” Tracey had fretted when he asked her next.

“He probably blew town,” Shadwell grumbled, and that was sufficiently worrisome that Aziraphale stopped Adam outside the bike shop to ask him.

“Definitely sulking,” Adam confirmed, after he’d shown off his new monster helmet. “Says he has a big deadline, but me and my friend Brian accidentally ditched school the other day and busted Brian’s skateboard too far away to walk home, so we had to call him to pick us up since everyone else was at work.”

Aziraphale bit back a smile. “And you didn’t want to tell your parents or guardians, I presume?”

Adam made a sour face. “No, but he was just as bad. I mean, he picked us up, but then he yelled the whole way back. He’s really in a mood.”

“How’s everything at school?”

Adam shrugged eloquently. It itched a little to see Crowley’s complicated tics playing out in Adam’s small limbs, but it was comforting, too. “School’s whatever. No more fights though. I don’t want to be grounded over the hols.”

“Good thinking.” Adam tolerated a hair-ruffling before he biked away. Aziraphale went home, cooked dinner, tidied up as if in a dream.

Last time he’d had to track Crowley down. Would Crowley even want that again? He’d seemed to respond well last time, but if he felt awkward about their dance then Aziraphale didn’t want to impose. Then again, Aziraphale didn’t want him to think it hadn’t been well-received. Although it was just as likely, and perhaps more likely, that Crowley was dwelling on the words of a twelve-year-old bully.

The tree outside Aziraphale’s window was bare but for a few remaining orange leaves. The space where Crowley usually pulled up in his Bentley remained empty on the street. 

He looked at the phone: a cold, dead thing. Crowley’s voice would light it up with life, would crackle through like its own electricity. 

Instead, Aziraphale grabbed his keys. He’d never been brave, but it was time he started. And it was time he stopped letting Crowley keep running.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, you've all waited long enough. We're gonna earn some ratings tonight!

**“Makes a cathedral, him pressing against  
me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe  
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.” **  
_saying your names — richard siken_****

The farm looked different at night.

He’d spent the night before, of course, but he’d been effectively distracted by wine and conversation and the warm sound of Crowley’s scratched-up records. Driving up in his now rarely-used car, Aziraphale could barely find his way from the road. There was one light at the low stone wall that protected the land from the street, and then the only light remaining came from the unveiled upper half of Crowley’s greenhouse.

Aziraphale pulled the car up next to Crowley’s sleeping Bentley and stepped out. Once his car was off and he was back in the frigid fall air, his eyes began adjusting, adapting to the muted light and the gleam of the stars.

He knocked on the greenhouse door, but nothing came, not even the sound of Golden Girls from the ancient TV. So, steeling his courage, Aziaphale stuck his hands in his pockets — he’d left too quickly to grab his coat — and went around the side.

The well-trimmed yard grew wilder as he rounded the back corner. It opened into a field, the long green grass near-black in the dark. Crowley, installed like a beam of moonlight in the overgrown pasture, was visible at once — drawing Aziraphale forward like he was the Earth’s only gravity.

Aziraphale had never been out back, had only seen Crowley stalk this land through the window, but he knew the river must run close. Now he could see it, hear it, a rushing ribbon catching more of the night’s light.

Crowley was upright, standing at an easel that seemed to hold a swath of the sky. With the river behind him, Crowley knee-deep in twisting grass, Crowley looked cast out of heaven. Crowley turned his head, watched him approach.

“Aziraphale.” Crowley’s voice was quiet, but Aziaphale had come right up to him, and he heard every syllable, each one brand-new on Crowley’s lips. “Angel.”

Aziraphale nodded, reached out, and then dropped his hand. Crowley seemed wilder from right in front of him, overwhelming. The painting in front of him was slashed with dark colors thick on the canvas.

“I came to tell you to stop hiding,” he said, his soft voice loud in the night, backed only by cricket and creek.

Crowley softened in front of him, the paintbrush wilting in his hand. “Who’s to say I’m hiding?”

Aziraphale shook his head and looked at Crowley. Really _looked_ at him, no longer afraid of everything that ran underneath their friendship. “Don’t pretend I don’t know you.” Didn’t — maybe not _love_ him, not yet, but he was hurtling down a one-way street.

“Everyone knows me too well,” Crowley answered. The arch words from children, the bite in his reception around town. Stray dogs, spare kids — the places where Crowley was kind were invisible to most. 

But not Aziraphale. Aziraphale saw him, plain as day in the dark of night.

“Show me your stars,” he said, coming close enough to touch.

Crowley flashed him a smile, shyer than any Aziraphle had seen before. “I’m just sketching out the colors. It’s too cloudy tonight for good light.”

A snowflake landed on Aziraphale’s nose, proving Crowley right. He laughed and wiped it away, peering at the canvas. It was dark and rich and Crowley all over, wild and beautiful and strange.

“It’s snowing,” he said, turning his grin to Crowley, who matched it. “First time this year.”

“To firsts,” Crowley echoed. He brushed his thumb over Aziraphale’s damp nose. He was close now, close enough to breathe in, but that wasn’t enough anymore. Aziraphale wouldn’t let him retreat anymore, wouldn’t let him doubt himself if he could help it. And if that meant it was time for him to be brave… for Crowley, he thought he could do it.

Aziraphale moved, gathering all of his courage to lean into Crowley’s space. To fit their mouths together, delicate but ineffable. Made to fit, with only the moon to witness.

It was freezing around them, another snowflake landing, then another. And then it was snowing in earnest and Aziraphale’s face felt ice-cold, but all he could feel now was the soft press of Crowley’s lips. They were thin and strong and just the right fit, the kiss deepening until he could feel the bite of Crowley’s sharp teeth on his own plump lower lip. Crowley made a sound like a sob, and Aziraphale wrapped his arms around him, drawing him close.

It was strange how lean the press of Crowley was against him, considering the weight of him in Aziraphale’s life. His hip-bones dug into Aziraphale’s stomach. His spine was a jagged line under Aziraphale’s hand. He felt delicate, impossibly so, like precious glass that was already broken into shards.

Aziraphale drew back enough to breathe, to peer into Crowley’s eyes, which he found intense and over-dilated even in the dark. “Alright?”

Crowley was startled into laughter. The corners of those expressive eyes wrinkled up, a purer expression of joy on his face than Aziraphale had ever seen before. “Yeah. Yes. Christ.” He was clutching Aziraphale’s forearms now, as if he was afraid to let go even for a second. “Definitely.”

Aziraphale grinned back, then leaned forward again, this kiss turning immediately dirtier. Deeper. Aziraphale was overwhelmed, amazed, sent spinning by the filthy swipe of Crowley’s neat tongue. He only broke apart again to shiver.

“Let’s get you warmed up,” Crowley whispered, and Aziraphale followed him into the house. His chest was light but his feet had never felt heavier, each step a moment in time that seemed to stay preserved forever.

He looked around as he walked in: the glass walls had gone nearly opaque with the gathering strength of the snow, snow that slid past the windows in a low, muffled march to close them in together, away from the world. He took another step. Another.

Crowley lead him to the bathroom and knelt by the bath to turn it on, his hand under a stream of water to determine its warmth, his head cocked to the side to keep both eyes on Aziraphale. Then the windows were steaming up and they were truly opaque and they could have been anywhere, but he was with Crowley, and that was what mattered. It mattered more than anything. 

Aziraphale didn’t know what to do with his hands, didn’t know what to do but to wait, to stand there awkwardly with his awkward body. The thought of stripping down made him want to hide, but he wanted to see what Crowley would show him of himself, and it didn’t seem fair to want that without giving it in return.

Crowley hadn’t turned the lights on yet, but it was dark out, and he stood up to kiss Aziraphale quickly, mouths already knowing how to meet, and left the room. Aziraphale could hear him poking around, opening a drawer, and he peeled himself off of the doorframe with enormous effort. His jumper was soaked and freezing: how had he not noticed? How had he not noticed it dripping on the floor, ruining the shirt underneath?

Aziraphale dropped the jumper and was working on the shirt when Crowley came back in. Aziraphale blushed — he’d only worked the sweater up his stomach, and it had caught in a sodden mess. He felt foolish and fat and unattractive but then Crowley was there. He set something down on the counter and then there were his hands, tugging and helping and baring Aziraphale to his button-down shirt, wet through so his undershirt was visible too.

It was a candle that Crowley had fetched, and the light was low and flattering, Crowley’s face lit in flickers of cheekbone and amber. “Two layers down, two to go,” Crowley joked in a low rumble. Aziraphale flushed again. He knew he was stuffy and overdressed — too many layers to be worth untangling, but Crowley _was_ , he was undoing button after button as if opening a precious gift. When had Aziraphale started shaking?

He slid his arms out of his shirt himself, and then it was Crowley’s turn to catch up, Crowley yanking his jacket and t-shirt off with short, impatient gestures. It caught up to Aziraphale that they were _doing_ — something— that something big was happening, and then their trousers and shoes and socks were puddled on the floor with the rest of their wet clothes and everything felt dark and quiet and okay.

More than okay. Crowley was too close to see, so Aziraphale drew back a bit, greedy to see what he could, desperate to see what he could. Crowley was beautiful in the candlelight, lean and strong and perfect. Aziraphale had never imagined the pattern of his chest hair, the slope of his shoulders. His collarbone jutted out but Aziraphale knew that already, had already seen glimpses and kept them close, and those dear and familiar bones made it okay that the rest was unfamiliar: the black boxer-briefs, the undeniability of Crowley’s cock behind smooth fabric.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, and then Crowley was helping him off with his undershirt, and then dipping his fingertips under the waistband of Aziraphale’s briefs, and Aziraphale swallowed and closed his eyes and let it happen, let them be naked together, let Crowley take his hand and lead him into the tub.

The bath was hot and warm and blanketing, comforting, melting away Aziraphale’s fears and insecurities — not all the way, but down to something manageable. The low-thrumming terror he’d always felt in locker rooms and at accidental glimpses of men’s chests and dicks through a lifetime of not being _supposed to look_ , all leaking away in the water around him like an invisible oil slick.

“Is this okay?” Crowley asked, and Aziraphale remembered that he couldn’t get stuck in his head now or this wouldn’t happen, that it was really happening and Crowley was here and Crowley — Crowley rose up from the water before him like an eldritch god, and Airaphale burned with how badly he wanted to get his hands all over him.

“Come here,” he said, and opened his arms. Crowley grinned and slid in place, and _oh_ , they’d never lined up their bodies like this, never fit together so well and so wet and so uncovered. Aziraphale held Crowley to his chest like a lifeline, like a treasure, and Crowley’s ass fit perfectly into the vee of Aziraphale’s legs, nestled perfectly atop Aziraphale’s thighs, and Aziraphale was never letting go of him.

Crowley laid his head back on Aziraphale’s shoulder and reached back, drawing Aziraphale’s face down into a slow and filthy kiss. It was strange: Crowley setting the pace, drawing Aziraphale along, even while Aziraphale clutched him. It wasn’t like holding a woman: it wasn’t like he remembered, he could hold Crowley and not be afraid of hurting him. He wanted to hold Crowley harder, to press him into his body and keep him there until they were the same person, Crowley slippery against Aziraphale’s growing erection.

“What do you want?” Crowley whispered, but Aziraphale couldn’t say _I want to pull you down under this water and drown with you_ , he couldn’t say _I want to yank you to pieces_ and _I want to shipwreck myself on your skin_ and still be normal. So instead he slid his hands down Crowley’s chest and took hold of his slim thighs — how could they be so slim, hadn’t Crowley eaten as a child – and held him exactly where he was.

“This,” he managed, not recognizing his voice when he finally found it. “I want this.” He held Crowley in place but his hips moved of their own accord, slotting under Crowley’s so his dick was sliding across Crowley’s ass and the inside of his thigh. Crowley smiled at him: not a smirk, but a real smile that made Aziraphale want to cry with how much he was feeling and how he’d never been turned on so much in his life, by slim thighs and a real smile that meant Crowley was _happy_ , here with him.

He kissed Crowley again and put his chin on Crowley’s shoulder, looking down and over Crowley’s body through the water. He was beautiful, so beautiful, and why was Crowley painting the sky when someone should be painting _him_ , someone who knew how to capture perfection — but Aziraphale didn’t want anyone to see Crowley either, to see him like this the way Aziraphale got to.

“God,” he said, not knowing if it was a prayer, and touched Crowley’s stomach, his chest, his thighs again. Crowley’s dick was hard and waiting, red even under the water, but Azirapahale was overloaded and lost —and Crowley, sensing this somehow, laced his fingers through Aziraphale’s and tugged them down.

“Like this,” he hissed, his hand moving slow over himself, Aziraphale’s hand following clumsily along. “Yes, angel. Keep going.” And he did, Aziraphale did, he followed the slide of Crowley’s hand and then matched it, following the up and the down and the twist at the end until Crowley took his hand away and Aziraphale could — could hold Crowley against him, could touch and feel and see him, and he’d never thought it could be like this, comfortable and familiar and so hot he was burning, the warm water nothing compared to this heat inside of him. The water wasn’t right for this, but Aziraphale could still touch, and was touching, and he didn’t noticed himself panting into Crowley’s ear until he realized he was rolling his hips up, fucking the juncture of Crowley’s thighs in a rocking motion that was better than anything except for Crowley’s face, his eyes closed and his neck tense, his head pressed back against Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“God,” Aziraphale said again, and looked up, but there was only the snow, tumbling down from the moonlight and the pitch-black, the sky open above them and the universe here, warm in his arms and pulsing in his hand and coming in the bathwater underneath the falling snow.

**I’ve been in your body, baby, and it was paradise.  
I’ve been in your body and it was a carnival ride.  
_the dislocated room - richard siken_**

Aziraphale woke up slowly, unwilling to surrender any ounce of his perfect dream.

It still felt like a dream upon waking, so impossible the warm pool of satisfaction in his stomach, the heavy warmth of Crowley’s glass-walled oasis.

Impossible, the arm tight around his stomach.

Aziraphale turned slightly and opened his eyes to the sweetest sight he’d found yet in this picturesque town. Crowley, not half-gone down the land, not seen through the dark or drink or the lenses of his protective sunglasses. Just — here, beside him, closer than air.

From up close like this, Crowley’s face was more imperfect and more perfect that Aziraphale had ever been allowed to see. Even asleep, his face was expressive, his mouth quirked down to match the shape of his untidy dreams. He had shadows under his eyes and freckles across his eyelids, stubble the same shade as his bronzite skin. Aziraphale leaned in and kissed his frown gently, gratified when Crowley shifted into awakeness, meeting him halfway in a gentle press of sour breath.

“Not a dream, then,” Crowley murmured against his mouth. Aziraphale hummed his agreement, pleased to be on the same page.

“It would seem not.” Aziraphale was surprised to hear that his own voice was prim as ever, but with a tinge of indulgence that was throatier and warmer than he’d ever had occasion to be.  
He’d thought he would be shy now, unsure how to act with this new thing between them. Like he should feel like a new person, maybe. But he just felt comfortable. Safe, contented. Known, and secure in his knowledge of Crowley — although perhaps there was more to learn.

He deepened the kiss (to an agreeable noise from Crowley, and set about finding out.


	10. Chapter 10

**The light is no mystery,  
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light  
from passing through.  
 _visible world — richard siken_**

“I thought everyone treated us like we were together _before_ ,” Aziraphale sniffed, in as dignified a complaint he could make.

“Everyone assumed before,” Crowley grinned. “Now, they know.”

“Mm.” Aziraphale didn’t quite have a word for everything he was feeling, Chagrined, proud, mostly pleased. Without talking about it, their dinners had turned into nights, weekends, weeks of back and forth, apart only when something needed doing. Crowley spent days in the bakery, either still sleeping upstairs or reading Aziraphale’s books and drinking countless cups of coffee in the back, drawing Aziraphale into arguments about literary characters in between pink-cheeked customers and the gusts of cold air that came in with them.

And now their appearance at the Four Horsemen together was met with Tracey’s knowing smile, with Shadwell’s grumbles aimed at the both of them. An old lady had stopped by the bakery to give Crowley a volunteer hour sheet, knowing he’d be there, warming himself like a reptile in front of the proofing oven. Right now they were hand-in-hand in the cobbled lane, passing the waves and friendly winks of their neighbors. Anathema made a rude gesture when they passed her window: Crowley made a ruder one.

“It’s not the worst thing, right?” Crowley’s voice hadn’t lost any of its amusement, but Aziraphale glanced over at him anyway. Just as he’d thought: a stiffness, in the shoulders.

“Of course not, dear.” He squeezed Crowley’s cool hand, still a revelation in his. The care and keeping of a Crowley was a careful thing, he was finding, but Aziraphale had always been good at detailed, delicate work. He’d always found the reward worthwhile. 

“It’s actually a month today, you know,” Crowley added. Now he sounded cross. “I tried to have a bouquet done, but the lady didn’t much like the card I dictated. Banned me for life, she said, and her the only florist in town.”

Aziraphale turned pink. Passers-by were moving fast to avoid the cold, so he hoped no one noticed. “It’s a small place! You can’t scandalize the only florist.”

“Too late.” Crowley winked. “I’ll just have to start growing flowers, run her out of town.”

Aziraphale unwrapped his second scarf without releasing Crowley’s hand and slid it over to Crowley’s neck, “That could take a while.”

Crowley wound the scarf around his neck and smirked. “Guess I’ll have to stick around.”

snow and dirty rain — richard siken

“Fucking _fuck_.”

“Oh dear,” Crowley answered, all gloating sweat. “I think I broke you.”

“Just- _fucking_ —“ Aziraphale wasn’t in the mood to be teased for swearing. He gripped Crowley’s jagged hip and tugged, yanking Crowley all the way down. He’d grown less afraid of damaging Crowley now, had learned the strength in sinew there. And he’d learned as well, all the ways that he could finally meet Crowley in the middle — could hold his own when they slipped into bed. Crowley was just so easy to please, so delicious to play like an instrument. He luxuriated under attention, thrilled at every murmured word. He lit up under Aziraphale’s touch like a neglected plant straightening up at the taste of water, and Aziraphale loved to pull him into pieces like a complex recipe, the results delicious.

Too delicious. He fucked up hard, pulling Crowley down down down as he snapped up and in and then came, unable to stop the chemical earthquake that quivered through his body. Crowley keened and shifted, coming up off of Aziraphale as Aziraphale tugged on his thighs, pulling Crowley up his stomach and over his chest to suck Crowley’s dick down, already breathless even before Crowley shifted forward to fuck down into his mouth. Aziraphale moaned into it and slid his palms back to Crowley’s ass, gripping hard, tugging them apart to reach up and thumb the spot that his own spend had left filthy. And then Crowley was slapping at the wall and filling Aziraphale’s mouth and nothing, nothing had ever felt so sacred.

****

**_His hands keep turning into birds and  
flying away from him._ Him being you. **   
_unfinished duet - richard siken_

“The eighties weren’t that long ago,” Crowley insisted, his voice high.

Adam laughed, and Aziraphale fought his own smile at Crowley’s protests. 

“They weren’t! I mean, sure, _culturally_ —”

“Culturally!” Adam jostled Crowley as Crowley opened the door to release him from the Bentley, shoving off of him playfully. “Culturally, he says.”

“And chronologically, my dear,” Aziraphale said matter-of-factly, pleased at the opposite expressions turned his way in response — Adam’s joyful, Crowley’s indignant. “Don’t worry, you’ll always have Freddie Mercury.”

“He would never disrespect me like this,” Crowley rumbled, pacificed at the mention of his greatest crush. Aziraphale could imagine a young, even more hot-headed Crowley of the eighties, his hair and tongue spitting fire as he shoplifted leather jackets and bummed cigarettes from drummers. It was a stark contrast to the buttoned-up little poster boy for repression that he had been. But they’d come a long way.

Everyone was in high spirits. Despite the grim weather, Adam practically bounced from car to door, the two men behind him. The animal shelter had become familiar to Aziraphale after so many afternoons tagging along as Crowley checked animals in and out like library books for his own personal adventures — a whip-thin Greyhound he borrowed to let run by the river, a lame duckling in his pocket when they went to the actual library. But now they were here to do a more permanent pickup.

“I can’t believe nobody adopted poor Lucy,” Aziraphale marveled, not for the first time. Crowley’s supervisor Susan, who had emerged to greet them, nodded from behind her clipboard.

“I know, the poor thing,” she clucked. “She’s just so shy in here, no one who meets with her ever gets to see how sweet she is. And of course it doesn’t help that someone named her Lucifer.”

“I’m right here,” Crowley protested. “I’m being very picked-on today, this is quite untoward. It’s not toward.”

“Oh, hush,” Adam said. He gave up any pretense of being a cool youth and plucked up Crowley’s wrist, tugging him faster. “Let’s go get her!”

Aziraphale slowed his step a little to observe, and Susan fell into step with him. Crowley was ostensibly adopting Lucy for himself, but Adam had been talking all week about the tricks he would teach her. Crowley had mumbled something about the principal thinking a pet could be helpful to Adam, and how could his foster parents take on a dog when they were taking in literal kids, and Aziraphale hadn’t heard the rest because he had just had to kiss him. 

Now the two of them were chattering from inside of the cages ahead, and Susan pressed her hand to her chest before giving Aziraphale a look. He nodded, smiling. They _were_ adorable, those fragile boys.

Lucy, for her part, was doing her best to match the enthusiasm being bestowed upon her. Her seal-grey fur shone as she wriggled up into laps and further to kiss faces.

Crowley clipped her leash on and Adam wound the handle around his wrist. Aziraphale walked beside them now as they returned to the front desk, and with the bustle and glee of Crowley, Adam, Susan, and a wound-up Lucy, the happiness in the air was heavy, palpable.

“Just a few more papers, dears, and she’s all yours.” Crowley and Adam grinned at each other as Susan continued, flipping each page over and pointing at various places for Crowley to sign. “This one is your release from us. This one’s a contact form. Initials there. Wonderful!”

“Wonderful,” Crowley repeated. “All right, well let’s—”

“Oh, there’s one more,” Susan added. Aziraphale managed to tear his eyes away from Crowley’s smile long enough to watch her turn the last page over. “Your volunteer paperwork. I wanted to get you to sign off on some hours while you’re here — it looks like you’re just about done!”

“Done?” Adam asked, stealing the words from Aziraphale’s mouth. Crowley didn’t speak.

“Just about,” Susan confirmed. Aziraphale peered at the paper on the counter, which was suspiciously full. “Another two hours and you’ll hit your legal requirement.”

“You did an afternoon at the community garden yesterday,” Aziraphale realized slowly, his heart sinking. “At least two hours.” Crowley’s nose had boasted a smudge of dirt when he came back. Aziraphale had wiped it off, then kissed the freckles revealed underneath. 

“Well then, there you go!” Susan said brightly. “Sign right here and I’ll get it submitted. All done! It’s been a real joy having you here, Anthony. So glad Lucy gets to leave with you.”

Adam turned and slammed out of the front door, Lucy trotting to keep up beside him.

“Should I go after him?” Aziraphale asked urgently, but Crowley’s shoulders were suddenly scrunched up to his ears. 

“Give him a second,” Crowley muttered, and signed the paper. Aziraphale stared past him at the door, wondering if he could run, too. It took just a minute for Susan to give Crowley a quick hug, sensing the tension in the air, another few seconds for Crowley to shove a fistful of papers into his jacket.

But when they went outside, Adam and Lucy were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “This is untoward. It's not toward.” is from 30 Rock!


End file.
